


The Golden Robin

by Violet_Witch



Series: Broken Bird's Club [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, dick grayson needs a hug 2020, robin!dick grayson, slight Mood Whiplash, slight unreliable narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27637187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violet_Witch/pseuds/Violet_Witch
Summary: Dick Grayson knows exactly how he’ll be remembered. He knows how the next generation looks up to him, and the soft spot he’s carved for himself in the hearts of his forebears. He sees the awe that they all hold for him—hidden and secret but still there— and he knows there will be only one legacy for the last Flying Grayson.Golden.He thinks that’s how it was always meant to be. From the first moment his parents began teaching him how to win a crowd to Batman promising that one day he’d lead the Justice league to now. Dick was made to shine.It doesn’t mean he hasn’t faltered. It says nothing of his guilt, or his sorrow, or his mistakes. It is a legacy, and those are almost never true.~~~Or, flashes of a life spent helping people and the costs that entailed. Can be read standalone.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Everyone, minor Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon
Series: Broken Bird's Club [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1419097
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30





	The Golden Robin

**Author's Note:**

> Me 8 months ago: how hard could it possibly be to write a reasonably sized distillation of 80 years of comic book history?
> 
> Me now, clutching my gallon sized cup of coffee with a permanent eye twitch and bags for days: ha. Ha ha. HAHAHA
> 
> In my defense, the world has sort of fallen apart since I started this. Anyway, this is mostly based on the New 52 timeline, but is really an amalgamation of everything. There's lots I chose to leave out for various reasons, but I figure that's okay since this is mostly a character piece. Sorry if I missed your favorite Dick plot point anyway, see the end notes for a link to some cut scenes.
> 
> Enjoy!

Dick Grayson knows exactly how he’ll be remembered. He knows how the next generation looks up to him, and the soft spot he’s carved for himself in the hearts of his forebears. He sees the awe that they all hold for him—hidden and secret but still _there_ — and he knows there will be only one legacy for the last Flying Grayson. 

Golden.

He thinks that’s how it was always meant to be. From the first moment his parents began teaching him how to win a crowd to Batman promising that one day he’d lead the Justice league to now. Dick was made to shine.

It doesn’t mean he hasn’t faltered. It says nothing of his guilt, or his sorrow, or his mistakes. It is a legacy, and those are almost never true.

The truth would include a broken teenager, the first to have his cape ripped away from him. The truth would show a grieving son, a lost brother, a broken friend. The truth, for whatever breadcrumbs it’s worth, would be tarnished.

Dick can’t blame them for nursing the lie instead. After the years he’s spent building it, how could he? He understands the ease of simplicity, the comfort of perfection—and really, why would he _want_ the weight of their scrutiny?

Their selective memory is really best for everyone, he thinks.

Still. Wouldn’t it be nice to be seen?

* * *

When Dick is only four years old, he finds a baby robin.

He stumbles onto the poor creature by accident when he’s out playing in the field near the circus grounds. It was a silly game that led him out so far, and his throat is full of laughter when he stops dead at the sight of it.

The bird is still just a chick, its feathers downy and not fully grown in. It lays on the ground, chest fluttering and body spasming with its pain. A broken wing.

Tears well in his eyes as he drops to his knees before it. He hadn’t known he had the potential for such sadness until this moment, but seeing the small creature in pain sends a fissure through his heart.

Except, his tears won’t do this bird any good, so Dick wipes his eyes and focuses on what he _can_ do. He slides his hands carefully beneath the bird, doing his best to keep the creature steady and supported as he rises gracefully to his feet.

The walk home is not long, and his parents listen to his explanation with patient ears and kind eyes. As a family, they set to work making the bird as comfortable as they can and nursing it back to health. 

A couple weeks later, the Graysons stand together where Dick first found the bird, and set it free. Tears are in Dick’s eyes again, so he wraps his arms around his mother’s leg, and buries his face in her pants.

“Oh, sweetheart,” his mother croons, carding her strong fingers through his hair. “Our little robin will be happier in his home. He’ll want to look for his own family.”

Dick holds her tighter. “But I’m gonna miss him so much.”

“We know,” his father says, wrapping one arm around his wife, and settling the other around his son. “But that little bird’s life is better for having you in it, even if you only knew him briefly. I’m proud of you for that.”

“Is your life better for having him in it?” his mother asks softly.

Dick jerks his head to the side. “No! If I’d never found him, I wouldn’t be sad now.”

His father sighs, but his mother is undeterred. She sweeps him into her arms, settles him on her hip, and looks him right in the eye. Her face is grave, but full of love. “My son, many things in this life are going to make you sad. There is no joy without it, just as your father and I could not fly as we do without gravity. You have to believe the highs are worth the lows.”

Dick doesn’t understand. Why can’t he just be happy all the time? He can’t see a reason for life to be so full of sorrow and pain.

His mother smiles at him, as if to say that it’s okay that he doesn’t get it yet. That they have all the time in the world for him to learn. She presses her forehead to his, and says, “You wanna know a secret?” He nods as best he can. “I’m sad for you all the time. I worry about all the pain you might face one day and I wish that I could take it all into myself and protect you, but I can’t.”

His eyes start to well again. “I’m sor–”

“No, no,” she laughs, “I’m happy that I’m sad. It means that I love you. Don’t you see? You’re _my_ robin. My life is better for having you in it.”

His father wraps them both in a big hug so that Dick is squeezed between them. He giggles in delight, basking in their warmth. “Mine too,” his father says, voice full of love and amusement.

Dick smiles so wide it hurts. “Mine three!” he exclaims, a little nonsensically.

Cradled in the safety of his parents’ arms, Dick knows that he will always be alright. His heart is too full of love to leave any room for doubt or fear about the sadness his mother foresees in his future, he only knows that to feel this happy has to be worth anything.

* * *

Dick’s toes curl over the edge of the platform. His palms are sweating, but kept dry by the chalk his mother had gently rubbed onto them. He’s ready for this, he knows he is, but his breath still wobbles when he lets it out and his heart still pounds. He is electric with childish excitement, determined to overcome the instinctual part of himself that holds onto fear with an iron grip.

From behind him comes his father’s deep chuckle, a sound like honeycomb and hot chocolate. “Son, you need to relax.”

He shakes his head. “There are too many butterflies in me,” he replies, words stolen from his mother.

“Then you must let some of them go,” his father tells him. “This is dangerous, and while a little excitement is good, too much can make you sloppy.”

“I won’t–”

“I know. We’ve trained you well, and you wouldn’t be up here if your mother and I didn’t believe you could do this.” The praise settles in Dick’s chest like a miniature sun, lighting him up from the inside. It burns some of the jitters out of him, but not all.

Steadying hands land on his shoulders and squeeze fondly as his father goes on. “Close your eyes,” he commands gently.

Dick does, even though his instincts scream and shout at him not to look away from the drop below.

“Concentrate on the feel of the bar in your hands. Think about its strength, it’s solidness. Picture for me all the times you’ve watched your mother and I trust it with our lives.” His father’s voice is low and soothing in his ear. “You, my son, are just as strong and solid as that bar, but not when you’re jumping around like Zitka when she sees a mouse.” Humor sneaks into his voice, and Dick giggles at the thought of his favorite elephant.

When his father speaks again, his voice is sober. “Now clear your mind of all distractions. Think only of your movements, the control you have over your body, and how it relates to the world around you. Up here in the air, there’s no room for excitement or fear, so you must accept both, and then set them aside.”

Dick takes a deep breath in, consolidating everything but this moment into his lungs, then pushing them out on the exhale.

“Are you ready, my little Robin?” his father asks. He smells like chalk and grass and safety.

“I’m ready.”

His father lets go, and steps back. Now it’s just Dick, the bar, and the chasm. There’s a net somewhere down there, of course, but it’s the last thing from Dick’s mind when he steps off the platform and into empty air. His parents told him once that they never think about the net. To think about the net is to condemn yourself to needing it.

Dick won’t let that happen to him.

* * *

“You alright?” his father asks softly, drawing Dick aside and looking at him with a little furrow of concern between his dark brows.

It makes Dick feel young and childish to be fretted over this close to a performance, so he pastes on a smile and replies, “Always.”

It’s enough to reassure his father, and they both resume their warm ups, but the truth is, Dick _does_ feel a little off. It’s a feeling of looming dread that’s stuck to him like burs to the soft cotton of his shirt. It’s been there since he saw Haley talking to the strange man.

He’d only caught a handful of words, but they’d sounded heated. When he’d asked Haley about it after, the man had brushed off his concerns, saying it was nothing. If Haley didn’t think it was a problem, then surely Dick shouldn’t worry his parents with it?

He glances over at them now, goading each other playfully to do more and more difficult stretches.

 _No, they don’t need to worry about it,_ Dick reassures himself. _Everything will be fine._

* * *

The world goes still.

There were moments before that—jostling to get himself a good place to watch the show from, his parents climbing the ladder to the trapeze platform, Haley announcing them to the crowd, their smiling faces as they waved to their audience—but those moments cease to exist the second that cable snaps and his parents miss the catch they’ve made a hundred thousand times before.

Somehow, that’s what sticks out to Dick as they fall. Not the sheer panic on their faces or the gasps from the audience—no. All Dick can think about when time freezes is that they missed the catch.

They die clawing desperately through the air to reach each other.

And then everything speeds up again and someone is screaming. It’s him, probably, but Dick doesn’t stop to figure that out, he just runs.

When he reaches them, the first thing he notices is that their hands—the ones that held him through a hundred sleepless nights—are separated by mere inches. Blood seeps from beneath them and into the dirt. His eyes rove over the bodies he’s spent his whole life knowing, but he doesn’t recognize them. Not like this. Broken and twisted in places that aren’t even supposed to bend. Jagged edges of white bone peeking out from broken skin.

He’s on his knees and he doesn’t know what to do, where to touch— _can_ he touch? His hands are shaking. Hovering over his mother’s hair, beautiful and black, fanned out across the ground.

Dick presses his hands against his mouth and finds them warm and wet. He’s curling in on himself, folding up, closing off.

His eyes are still dry, but his throat is oh so painful.

 _This isn’t happening. This can’t be possible. They can’t be_ —

They’re supposed to help him grow up. They’re his parents, they aren’t _allowed_ to leave him alone like this, they _promised_ to always be there, to _protect_ him. They should be protecting him from _this_.

It’s not—

Someone is gathering Dick into their arms, picking him up, and settling him against a broad chest.

“You’re not alone,” a voice whispers, soft and heavy. “I’m going to protect you.”

Then— _finally_ —the tears fall and suddenly Dick is sobbing. He can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think. Can only cry and hold onto his guardian with whatever strength is left in his small body.

His whole chest aches, and he thinks for a moment that something must have happened to him, maybe he fell too, but there’s nothing. The pain—the impossible, inescapable pain—is all him. A clamp on his heart, a band around his lungs, squeezing and squeezing until finally, something inside Dick Grayson gives—

—and breaks.

* * *

They give him a blanket.

Nobody can meet his eye. They can only send him pitying, and awkward glances. They don’t know what to say to him.

Dick doesn’t care, barely even notices. Nothing they could offer him would ease the pain he’s in, so it’s better that they’re leaving him alone.

He doesn’t know how much time passes before someone finally approaches him. It’s a woman in a gray pantsuit. She has kind eyes.

“Everything’s going to be alright, kiddo,” she tells him.

He doesn’t say anything back.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Haley says at the funeral.

 _Sorry about what?_ Dick wants to ask. _Sorry that my parents are dead? That it’s probably your fault? That you’re leaving me here in this city that is not my home at this orphanage where I don’t belong?_

But he feels dull and drained and his desires have been as weak as his appetite, so instead he just walks away.

* * *

What do you say to the man with whom you have no connection who decides to take you in as his ward with no real explanation?

Thank him for removing you from what was quickly shaping up to be a terrible environment? Question him about his motive and intentions? Curse him for stepping into a role that’s reserved for two people now buried in the cold, lifeless soil of a cemetery in a land oceans from home?

Dick doesn’t know, so he chooses none of the above. He just goes with the stranger, silent and somber as a man exchanging one prison cell for another.

* * *

Dick’s new room is like nothing he’s ever seen before. Large enough to fit two Zitka’s in it, and decorated with the kind of elegance Dick reserves in his mind for palaces. All that really matters though is that the door is solid, and the bed is soft. He doesn’t have any plans to leave it.

It’s been weeks now since—

Just since. Dick can breathe again, at least. Other than that… 

He keeps going over the moment in his mind, pinpointing the exact second that his parents’ expressions changed from serenity to panic. Thinking about what he could have done to stop it from happening.

He could have told them about Haley. About the shady man and his threatening words. Those words are perhaps what Dick thinks of most of all.

 _You better… Zuco needs his money_ now… _think you can live with that on your conscience, old man?_

He drills them into his memory, tracing the shape of them with every spare second. He’s going to need them, because his parents didn’t die. They were murdered. Someone is responsible for the gaping hole in Dick’s chest, for the life that has been stolen from him, and with every day, the fog of numbness lifts a little more to reveal a new layer to the anger roiling in Dick’s blood.

* * *

“What are you doing?”

Mr. Wayne flinches, his whole body going taut as he whips around to look at Dick. “How did you get in here?” he growls.

Dick shrugs. Padding around Mr. Wayne’s cartoonishly high backed computer chair to get a better look at the tech set up. “Followed you,” he says unabashedly.

It’s been over three months since Dick first came to Wayne Manor, and in that time he’s found that there’s an ebb and flow to his grief not unlike the tides. Today his grief has ebbed. It still looms over him with all the weight of the bottomless sea, but his limbs don’t feel like lead, and there was enough room in his head this morning for a few tendrils of curiosity.

His answer doesn’t seem to please Mr. Wayne. “I would have noticed you.”

“Yeah, but ‘ya didn’t.” Deciding his low vantage point isn’t nearly good enough for inspecting the computer screen, Dick hauls himself up onto Mr. Wayne’s lap.

The man goes stock still, and Dick spares a single, confused thought for Mr. Wayne’s odd reaction to touch (a phenomenon he’s noticed before that he’s yet to make heads nor tails of) before moving onto more important things. “I don’t know much about crime Mr. Wayne, but these certainly look like police profiles.”

“What are you doing,” Mr. Wayne says blankly.

Dick glances back at him. “Looking at your computer, obviously,” he answers, but Mr. Wayne doesn’t seem to be processing. Reasoning that whatever big thoughts are clogging up Mr. Wayne’s mind are probably going to take a minute, Dick turns back to the computer and starts reading the file displayed.

He’s only about two sentences in when Mr. Wayne finally catches up. “Wait, you shouldn’t—” then he growls, and picks Dick up by the armpits.

“Hey!” Dick yelps.

Already standing, Mr. Wayne starts to walk back towards the stairs that lead up to the big grandfather clock, but Dick squirms in his grasp, and with a little maneuvering, he manages to bunch his legs up and get his feet against Mr. Wayne’s stomach. He uses the surface as a springboard, and launches himself forward and out of Mr. Wayne’s grasp. He hits the ground and rolls until he’s back on his feet.

When he turns back to Mr. Wayne, the man has staggered back a few steps, and is clutching his stomach more in surprise than pain.

“That wasn’t right Mr. Wayne!” Dick scolds. “Lifts are a level two skill, and they require communication beforehand! You don’t just go picking people up without their consent, it’s _rude_.” He pauses, hands still on his hips, but the fire exiting his words as he adds thoughtfully, “Well, unless you’re family, or really friendly I guess. I mean, Alex used to pick me up all the time, but he was a strongman. That’s just sort of what strongmen do. And there was implied consent anyway.”

Mr. Wayne is still giving him those long slow blinks and that slack jawed look like Dick just grew a second head.

There’s a moment of unbearable (at least on Dick’s part) silence, before he says, “Wait, is physical contact like a level two skill for you? Am I supposed to ask before I touch you?” He scrunches his nose up. “I’m sorry, but that sounds sort of awful. In the Circus, we lived in really close quarters, so everyone was always touching everyone else, and sharing their stuff, and helping each other with their acts—and just being together, I suppose. It’s already strange enough living in this huge place with just three of us, I can’t imagine an added no touching rule.”

Mr. Wayne is frowning now, but it’s his thinking frown, so Dick’s not too worried. “Are you lonely here?” he asks.

Dick winces. “I mean, you’re being a really generous host, and I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I guess you’re also technically in charge of me—or was that supposed to be Alfred?—anyway, that means I’m not supposed to lie to you.” He bites his lip, trying to think what his parents would want him to do in this situation. It makes his heart ache, but he pushes on. “I’m not really sure lonely is the word for it,” he answers finally.

“What word would you use?”

Dick starts to pace, his body demanding movement. “I’m not sure exactly. This is just all really different from what I’m used to. Like, the exact opposite of what I’m used to.” It feels like he’s cracked a leak. Weeks of silence, and suddenly someone’s listening to him, and Dick can’t seem to censor himself, not that he was ever any good at that anyway. “I guess I’m homesick. I miss all my friends, and the animals, and performing—well, I say _performing_ , but mostly I just mean I miss flying. You know I did trapeze, right?”

Mr. Wayne nods, his voice a little strangled. “They informed me of your background, yes.”

“Well I was really good at it,” Dick preens, but quickly deflates. “And… most of all I miss my parents, obviously.”

Mr. Wayne’s jaw clenches. The silence stretches, but just as quickly as the words started to flow, they’ve dried up.

At length, Mr. Wayne says, “I can’t do anything about all the people you miss, but I can help you fly again.”

Dick perks up, the weight of his grief easing slightly with this distraction. “Really?”

Mr. Wayne scratches the back of his neck as if suddenly self conscious. “It’s not exactly the same, but I have some gym equipment you can use that might—”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Dick exclaims, practically shaking with his excitement. Before he can think to stop himself, he’s launched himself into a hug. Mr. Wayne goes tense again, but Dick is already pulling away. “Just let me get changed,” he says, taking off in the direction of his room at a full sprint.

By the time he gets back, Mr. Wayne has also changed, from black pants and a turtle neck to his own work out clothes. He hesitates when he sees Dick in one of his old practice leotards, but only for a second before leading him over to an area clearly designated as a form of gym.

“I’m not sure I’ve said yet Mr. Wayne, but this whole secret basement thing is really cool. I didn’t know places underground could _be_ this big.” Dick says, stretching his arms as they walk. “Do you have a name for it? Secret lairs should have names.”

“No.”

“You’ve got to call it _something_.”

Mr. Wayne finally stops at the edge of the mats. He looks at Dick, who’s puppy dog eyes are on full display, and relents, “Usually I just refer to it as the Cave.”

Dick nods seriously. “Very dramatic, Mr. Wayne, but not very specific. That’s a branding issue.”

“ _A branding—_ ”

“You should call it the Batcave.”

Mr. Wayne freezes.

“Y’know, you being Batman and all,” Dick explains. “Also the bats everywhere, but mostly that first thing.”

“Okay,” Mr. Wayne finally chokes out.

After a few victory cartwheels, Dick starts his usual stretching set on the mats. “I’m not really familiar with most of this equipment,” he goes on, ignoring Mr. Wayne’s eerie quietness as he examines the area around them. “I don’t think I can do much with the weights or those weapons racks—boy would I like to learn _that_ though.” He pauses for Mr. Wayne to offer some sort of reaction, but the man hasn’t seemed to have recovered yet, so he continues, “The gymnastics equipment makes more sense. The balance beam is like a training tightrope, and pommel horse reminds me of handstand canes. Sort of.”

The vastness of the Batcave and the complete silence of his company makes any pause in his chatter seem oppressive, so Dick keeps talking as he stretches. At first he just muses about which of his skills might be transferable to the strange equipment, which devolves into a general comparison of gymnastics to its less mainstream, but sister practices.

When he’s all stretched out, he presses from his seated position on the floor into a handstand, before back bending out of it and continuing that momentum all the way back to his feet. Then he does a backflip, just to show off. “Okay Mr. Wayne, I’m all warmed up,” he reports needlessly.

To be quite honest, the equipment is extensive, and quite impressive, but none of it is what he really needs. None of it comes close to the sort of flight he’s used to on trapeze. Still, needs must.

Dick decides to start with the rings, reasoning that between the height and the bars, it’s probably the closest he’s going to come.

Mr. Wayne makes no protest, so in a matter of moments, he’s scrambled up the short ladder and onto the platform. His grips managed to get lost in all the moving around, and Dick mourns the loss, but there isn’t much he can do about it now. At least Mr. Wayne has chalk.

He mounts the rings, excitement humming through his veins… and immediately realizes it’s nothing like trapeze. He has no idea what to do next. Frowning, he tries moving his body in different ways, but that doesn’t do anything more than give him a little bit of swing.

“Uh, Mr. Wayne,” he calls, his voice echoing around the Batcave.

The man materializes in his line of sight before the first echo dies. “Yes?” he says, and it’s his first word in twenty minutes.

Dick can feel blood rushing to his face, but forces himself to push past his embarrassment. “I don’t know what to do now.”

Mr. Wayne hums considering for a moment, studying Dick like he’s a particularly interesting puzzle. “Well,” he finally says, “we’ll just have to find you some examples.”

They pass the next three hours using a tablet Mr. Wayne produces out of seemingly nowhere to look up youtube videos for all the different equipment. Some of it is easy for Dick to copy once he’s seen it done, but other skills he can only manage clumsily, or not at all. It’s the skills he doesn’t pick up right away that thrill Dick the most. They’re the ones bursting with potential.

His favorite part though, is that once he figures out the rings, they _are_ a little bit like flying. Sure, mostly they’re about strength and control, but when he tries a dismount, the rush of flipping through the air as he falls to the ground is something like the weightlessness he’s been missing.

It’s not the same—he has a feeling it’s never going to be the same, even if he gets some proper equipment—but for that moment in the air, he feels close to his parents again. Like they’re standing somewhere nearby, cheering him on.

By the time he and Mr. Wayne finally call it a night, his muscles ache and he’s worked up an appetite, but for the first time since coming here, he can’t keep a grin off his face. “That was really fun Mr. Wayne,” he says. “Thank you for letting me use your secret lair.”

Mr. Wayne gives him a small smile. He’s never seen the man with any smile bigger than that though, so Dick decides to be pleased with this. “You can use this space anytime, just tell me or Alfred first.”

“Oh my goodness, thankyouthankyouthankyou,” Dick gushes, launching himself at Mr. Wayne in a flying hug. By the time he remembers that Mr. Wayne doesn’t like hugs, the man is already wrapping his arms awkwardly around Dick in return.

“That’s… okay. And you can call me Bruce.”

Dick grins. “Okay, Bruce.”

* * *

Dick waits until Alfred leaves for the kitchen before making his presence known. “Can I help?” he offers, stepping into the curtained off section of the Batcave that serves as an infirmary.

Bruce’s head snaps up, eyes wide, but he settles quickly into long suffering resignation when he sees Dick. “I don’t suppose you’d listen to me if I told you it’s past your bedtime.”

“Nope,” Dick agrees cheerfully, taking over the task of cleaning and bandaging some shallow cuts along Bruce’s arms. “What happened?”

The hesitation before Bruce speaks is noticeable. “Fight,” he finally grunts.

Dick rolls his eyes. “Well, _duh_.” He’s quiet for a moment before he says much more softly, “You get hurt a lot.” There’s something else beneath those words that neither of them is keen to name.

Bruce is tense beneath Dick’s ministrations. “I do.”

“You’d get hurt less if you weren’t alone.” He means for the observation to be casual, but instead it just feels like a bomb placed delicately between them.

The silences between each response seem to be growing longer instead of shorter. “Perhaps, but then that other person might get hurt too.”

In contrast, Dick’s response is immediate, and nowhere near careful. “Not if we looked out for each other.” He’s stopped bandaging Bruce’s cuts now, and is instead staring the man down, his features set in determination. He can see the realization dawn in Bruce’s eyes that this isn’t a spur of the moment conversation, or even a theoretical one.

The air gets thicker.

“Dick,” Bruce begins slowly, reproachfully. “What I do is dangerous. It took me years of training to gain the skill and experience necessary to—”

“So? I’ve already been training for years, and you can teach me everything else I need.”

“I could, but—”

“Bruce.” Dick’s voice hasn’t even started to crack yet, but it’s firm now, and something in it makes Bruce shut up and listen. “My parents were murdered. I know you know that, because why else would you have been there? Batman doesn’t just show up to circuses because he’s interested in the elephants. You knew something was fishy—or you at least suspected.”

Bruce’s face has guilt written all over it, but Dick nips that at the bud. “I’m sure you did whatever you could, just like I’m sure now that you’ve got a case open looking for their murderer.” He pauses, swallows. “I have information that could help you, but I need you to let me in. On all of it. I… ” Dick trails off.

He wants to tell Bruce about the fire inside him. The anger, that’s so overwhelming, and so foreign. He was never angry before, not like this, and it feels like poison. He wants to be rid of it, but he can’t until he knows that his parents’ murderer has faced justice. In the meantime, he tries to keep that flame on lock, but lately he’s been slipping, and it keeps peeking out. He can hardly think for all the flame is driving him to _do_ something.

But it turns out, Dick doesn’t have to say a thing, because Bruce sighs, and looks at him with eyes full of understanding. “Okay.”

“Wait, really?”

For all his unwrinkled youth, Bruce seems to age years in a moment. “I… I understand what you’re going through, and I know that if I don’t…” He cuts off abruptly, closing his eyes as if looking at the boy in front of him has suddenly become too difficult. When he opens them again, the vulnerability is gone, and what remains is a man who has cast out any and all doubt. “I know what happens to you if I don’t do something. There’s no way of knowing if this is the right thing to do, but you deserve justice. I’ll train you, and we can find your parents’ killer together.”

This is the face of a man who has broken bone and bent men to his will, but Dick doesn’t hesitate for a second before throwing his arms around Bruce’s shoulders, and hugging him for all he’s worth. “Thank you.”

Bruce hums his acknowledgment, before hissing loudly. “Ribs.”

Murmuring an apology, Dick quickly pulls back. He finishes bandaging Bruce’s cuts, and they follow Alfred to the kitchen together.

* * *

Bruce finds him on top of the tallest skyscraper in Gotham, legs swinging over the edge, eyes fixed unseeingly on the lights spread below like a patchwork quilt. Dick doesn’t bother turning to check, he can hear the crunch of gravel beneath Bruce’s boots, and recognizes it as the man’s bizarre form of courtesy.

“Hi,” Dick says finally.

“Hello.” The fondness that Bruce usually tries to hide when he’s in the suit laces his voice freely.

Carefully, he lowers himself onto the ledge beside Dick. He leaves a foot of space between them, but Dick is so tired of space, so he scoots over until they’re pressed side to side, and Bruce is forced to put his arm around Dick in a sideways hug or risk having it awkwardly pinned to his body.

He may still suck at initiating contact, but Bruce has gotten more used to Dick’s snuggly tendencies, so he merely snorts softly at the boy’s antics, and hugs him closer.

Dick has been careful for the past few months (almost a year now, and isn’t _that_ insane). It isn’t just Bruce who has kept his distance, they’ve both been circling each other like tigers locked in a cage. 

For all that time, Dick has been practically aching with loneliness. He misses receiving and giving love as easily as breathing. He misses the careless touches and the soft words. The constant bustle of the circus, and even the tight quarters his family lived in. But he hasn’t let himself seek comfort from this man who welcomed Dick into his home.

Companionship was a necessary consequence of cohabitation, even if one cohabitant was as closed off as Bruce. Understanding, he accepted because it was so integral to their budding partnership and the justice he’d been promised. Comfort, though, is something Dick has been practically running from.

It was because of the flame inside him, probably. So bright with anger, and yet Dick feared comfort might snuff it out, and all he’d be left with would be the crushing weight of his stagnant grief. No, it was better to keep his guiding light than risk breaking down before justice was served.

Besides, would taking comfort from the man who now served as his guardian not betray the parents whose loss was still so fresh? Thinking of it always conjured a knot of guilt and uncertainty that writhed in his stomach until any craving for comfort had soured in his stomach.

But now. Now Dick turns until he can wrap both his arms around Bruce’s chest and bury his nose in the man’s armored side. It’s hardly comfortable, but it hides his face, and at least the tears leaking from his eyes won’t show up on the black material.

Bruce’s grip around him tightens.

“I thought,” Dick says, when he’s reasonably sure his voice won’t betray him, “that staring him down, making him face me after what he’d done, would feel good. That I would feel… _powerful_. But I think I feel more lost than ever.”

Ever since the night they died, Dick has felt small and vulnerable. Alone and weak. Holding Tony Zuco’s life in his hands was supposed to change that, but all it did was strip Dick of his anger the way he once feared Bruce’s comfort might, and he is just as directionless now as he’d suspected he would be.

Bruce rubs soothing circles into Dick’s back, but says nothing. There’s an understanding to his silence, a mournful kinship that has always meant so more to Dick than platitudes. Bruce’s silence invites confidences, so that’s what Dick gives him.

“He was just a man, B. I looked him in the eye, and he was afraid of me. Of what I would do to him. Something in me made that man terrified for his life, and you know what? He was right. Until the moment I saw that spark of humanity, I think I was going to kill him.” He expects Bruce to get angry at this admission, but the man doesn’t so much as tense.

Dick swallows before pushing forward. “I wanted him to be the embodiment of evil and suffering. I wanted dealing with him to be like purging all this pain from my soul, like bleaching a stain, but he was just a man, and killing him or locking him up or even letting him go doesn’t change that my parents are _dead_.”

His voice breaks on the last word, and a fresh wave of tears offer an apt exclamation point to his words.

Bruce gives him a moment to recover himself, then speaks, voice low and soft. “Nothing will.” Dick gasps with fresh pain, but Bruce soldiers on, “The pain never really goes away. It’s something that will always live inside you, but you don’t have to become it.”

Dick thinks of a baby robin flying away on a once broken wing.

“You are _alive_ Dick, and your parents would be so proud of you,” Bruce tells him, as if he might have forgotten. Maybe he had. “And,” he hesitates, his voice going noticeably thicker, “you’re not alone.”

The truth of those words strikes deep.

Ever since they first met, Bruce has always understood what Dick was going through, and always done his best to support Dick. Whether that meant keeping him company when he couldn’t sleep, or training him for several months in martial arts so that he could face his parents’ murderer.

It hits Dick with a sudden, but unshakable certainty, that he wants this man to be his family. When he pulls back to look Bruce in the eye as best he can with their masks on, the set of his jaw announces that certainty before he even opens his mouth.

“Please adopt me,” he says.

Bruce’s jaw falls slack. “I hadn’t thought you wanted—”

“You were right, I wasn’t ready yet, but I am now.” He pulls away even further so that he can free his hands to wipe his eyes. He is so very sure about this, but he wants to give Bruce the space to be sure too. “You’re right. I _am_ alive, and my parents will always be with me, but that means I have to honor their memory. Part of that means living my life, and I want that to include you. Not just as my legal guardian, but as my father.”

“I don’t want to replace your real father,” Bruce says, but he sounds regretful.

Dick smiles. “You won’t. My heart is big enough for many loves, and many families.”

“That,” Bruce says softly, “I could never doubt.”

“I don’t need an answer right away. I understand that there are a lot of factors to consider, but—”

“Yes. I’ll adopt you.”

They almost fall off the roof from the force of Dick’s hug.

“Also,” he adds into Bruce’s shoulder, “I’m keeping the costume.”

Bruce jerks away, holding Dick at arms length to better look him in the eye. “ _What?_ ”

With a distinctly lopsided grin, Dick shrugs. “Tonight might not have given me what I thought it would, but that doesn’t change how right I’ve felt these last couple months. Being Robin has helped me make the world a better place, and bring hope to the hopeless. I think that’s the best way I could ever honor my parents, don’t you?”

Bruce tries to look stern, but Dick can see the fond acceptance already peeking out. “There are probably less dangerous ways.”

“Where would the fun in that be?”

He doesn’t seem to have a retort for that.

* * *

“What, pray tell Master Richard, do you hope to achieve here?”

Dick, currently fourteen years old and dangling from his knees on the chandelier in the main entryway, grins. “I’m helping dust,” he announces confidently.

Alfred arches a brow. “Well, if that is the case, then one might think to wonder where you’re hiding your feather duster. I don’t seem to see one on you."

Patting down his pockets as if he might manage to produce the item in question, Dick affects a look of innocent surprise. “Oh, I must have forgotten it. My mistake. I suppose I won’t be able to help you dust after all.”

“Nonsense, Master Richard,” Alfred replies, dry as dirt. “It would be rude of me to refuse the aid you’re so charitably offering because of a simple mistake. I will fetch a feather duster for you and toss it up. After you finish with this chandelier, I do so hope you will find yourself amenable to helping with all the others. After all, the task will go far more quickly with a helper of your talents. Perhaps when you’re done with that, we might also discuss cleaning the gutters, sweeping the chimney, and polishing the banisters. You _are_ the inhabitant of this Manor most acquainted with them.”

By the time Alfred’s finished speaking, Dick’s grin has completely dissolved.

“This was a trap, wasn’t it?” he accuses hopelessly.

Alfred’s eyes twinkle. “I haven’t the faintest clue what you mean, Master Richard. I’m simply building upon the offer you yourself extended.”

Dick proceeds to spend the rest of the day hard at work, but the blow is softened by the multitude of snack breaks, which Alfred kindly fills with sandwiches, cookies, and other delectable tidbits. To even further ease the monotony, Alfred suggests they listen to something while they work, and stoically endures Dick’s eclectic and undiscerning taste in music. All together, it’s not a bad day, although Dick could have lived without Bruce’s baffled inquiries concerning the leaves and chimney dust stuck in his hair at dinner.

* * *

They’re in the Batcave—Bruce on the computer with his cowl down and Dick at his own station sans mask and spinning listlessly instead of focusing on the screen—when the pressure reaches bursting, and Dick has to ask, “What does love feel like?”

The sound of Bruce’s fingers tapping on the keyboard halts. “ _What_?” He sounds strangled.

“I mean, I know what love feels like for family, obviously, but what about love between…” He blushes. “Y’know, a guy and a girl.”

Bruce is quiet for a long time, but when he finally speaks, his voice is relatively even. “You’re referring to romantic love.”

It’s not really a question, but Dick nods anyway.

Bruce mutters something under his breath, but all Dick catches is ‘Alfred’ and ‘dammit’. He seems to decide against whatever he was thinking about though, because he sighs deeply and turns in his chair to give Dick his full attention. “First of all, romance isn’t always between a boy and a girl, it can be between anyone as long as it’s healthy and consenting.”

Dick nods again, rapt.

Despite looking as solid and unmovable as always, something about the tightness of Bruce’s face gives Dick the impression of him squirming. “Love is—” he cuts off. “Well, it feels like—” he cuts off again, his face flushing a deep crimson. He coughs into his gauntleted hand.

Dick giggles. “Should I rephrase to ask how you feel about Catwoman?” he teases.

“That’s the problem,” Bruce mutters looking away from Dick and dragging a hand through his already messy hair.

When he looks back at Dick, his apprehension has been replaced with the resolve of a man who’s used to facing down unimaginable terrors and is ready to do it again. “Son, the truth is that I don’t know what that kind of love feels like. I’ve dedicated my life to the Mission, to this.” he waves a hand over the bat insignia on the front of his suit. “There hasn’t been… room for that sort of love.”

He doesn’t look sad or regretful as he says it, but Dick thinks he sounds a little hollow. Wistful maybe.

Through a combination of Bruce consistently acting old beyond his years, and Dick never pushing to be any older than he is, the not-really-that-large age gap between them has never felt strange, but now, faced for the first time with an area where they are very nearly on equal footing, it occurs to Dick that their relationship won’t ever be quite as cut and dry as father and son, even if they refer to each other as such.

They’re family—of course they are and Dick wouldn’t have it any other way—but in this moment, Dick feels more like he’s speaking with an older brother. It doesn’t really matter though. Strict definitions and labels have never been more important than what’s in Dick’s heart, and what’s in Dick’s heart is love and respect for the man in front of him, so Dick pushes away thoughts of classifications and focuses on the conversation at hand.

“So, you don’t love Catwoman?”

Bruce’s mouth twitches into an almost smile. “Not exactly, and I’m guessing you don’t really _love_ Batgirl either.”

Dick squeaks, the blush that had faded from his cheeks coming back darker than ever as he frantically waves his hands in denial. “I don’t… what makes you think—?” he sputters.

“Relax sport. It was a pretty easy guess.” His voice is laced with amusement.

Cautiously, Dick lowers his hands. “Was I super obvious?”

Bruce shakes his head. “Not to anybody who doesn’t know you.”

With her name now out in the air, Dick’s mind slips back to earlier that night when her laugh had brightened Gotham’s inky rooftops. He would do anything to hear that sound again.

“Son,” Bruce’s voice calls Dick back to the present, “I think you’re experiencing your first crush.”

“I am?”

“That would be my educated guess.” Dick must look dubious, because Bruce rolls his eyes and asks, “Does your heart beat faster around her? Do you feel warm, and sweaty? Do you think about her all the time?”

Hesitantly, he nods.

“Then it’s probably a crush. You’re reaching an age where this is to be expected.” Bruce hesitates, looking even more uncomfortable than before. Turning his gaze firmly to the ceiling, he says, “While we’re on the subject, there are a couple of other things that you can expect during this tumultuous time in your life where—”

“Can you just give me a pamphlet or something?” Dick interrupts, his voice a few octaves too high.

Bruce risks a glance down at him. “That… might be for the best.”

“Thank god.”

The expression on Bruce’s face says that he agrees.

“Is wanting to tell you all about her part of having a crush too?” Dick asks after a moment.

There’s definitely a smile tugging at Bruce’s lips as he swivels back towards his computer. “It is.”

That’s close enough to permission for Dick. “When we first met her I was kind of like ‘who’s this?’ ‘what does she think she’s doing?’ and I know you thought that too, but wow B, she’s so awesome. She fights really well, and she’s super smart, and pretty, and funny too. Did you see the way she took out those bad guys tonight? She was all—”

He goes on for a while.

Bruce lets him.

* * *

“What has legs but no arms, a head but no eyes?”

“A table.” Dick is not about to admit to enjoying himself during a fight. No siree. This is serious business. “Come on Ed, you can do better than that!” Banter is just a distraction tactic.

Riddler growls in frustration, swinging his cane at Dick with all his might. Dick sways backwards and the heavy metal head whistles by.

“Say, think you could do that again? Gave me a nice breeze.”

Ed looks about ready to stomp his foot and growl about how not fair Dick’s being, but instead he just renews the energy in his swings.

Dick waits for the opening to present itself for vaulting over the Riddler and in the process pulling the man to the ground. “How much longer Batman?” he calls to where his mentor is plugged into Riddler’s computer systems.

“Sixty seconds.”

Dick’s not heavy enough to pin Riddler beneath him, so he hits the guy hard enough to stun him. “Nothing personal, Ed,” he says conversationally as he flips the man over and starts binding his wrists.

Ed moans painfully in response.

When he’s sure Riddler is secure, Dick pops back to his feet and makes his way over to Batman, using his coms to signal the GCPD as he does. The garish countdown clock plastered across the wall sized screens is steadily ticking down, but before Dick’s eyes, it glitches, and freezes.

Batman gives a happy hum, which isn’t much different than any of the other sounds he makes except that it’s got an edge of satisfaction to it. He turns to Dick. “You did well, although we should—”

He’s cut off by an incessant beeping from somewhere in his utility belt. Oddly, it’s not an alarm Dick recognizes.

Batman’s frowning as he pulls the offending device from its pouch without even having to search for it. He glances briefly at Dick before turning slightly and looking straight ahead, as if to give himself some illusion of privacy.

He flips what Dick can now safely assume is a communicator open and says into it, “Batman here.”

“ _Batman! Thank god you picked up, we need you ASAP_.”

The voice filtering through the small speaker is male, a little desperate, and utterly unfamiliar.

“Where and why?” Batman demands, growl out in full force.

 _“Metropolis. Lex made an army of robot monkeys and Supes called for backup because holy_ hell _there’s a lot of them. Like, I understand Lex is uber rich, but how does he even manufacture this many—”_

“Stay on topic Flash.”

_“Right, anyway, I was on duty so I’m here, but turns out, these monkeys are both self repairing and annoyingly intelligent so we need someone with your robotics skills to come knock out the whole mainframe.”_

There’s a sound like a roar in the background and a feminine voice with a strong accent yells, _“I will not be bested by these small mechanical beasts!”_

A beat, and then the first voice adds, _“Diana is here too.”_

 _“Names,”_ Batman reprimands, the word carrying the familiar weight of repetition. He shoots Dick another glance. “I’ll be there soon. Batman out.” He snaps the communicator closed.

It’s hard not to notice when your mentor joins the world’s most overpowered book club, so of course Dick knows about the Justice League. Bruce had even let him take a surface level look through their files on the Batcomputer, although that offered little more than a brief summation of their abilities and aliases.

He’s sort of dying to know more, so when Batman says, “Wait here until the GCPD arrives, then swing back to the Manor.” Dick is already shaking his head before the sentence is even all the way out.

“Take me with you,” he says.

Batman frowns. “Robin—”

“I can help, and the GCPD’s already here anyway.” Sure enough, the sound of sirens is growing louder outside Riddler’s hideout.

He doesn’t look happy about it, but he also doesn’t have the time to talk Dick out of it, so Batman grunts his reluctant acquiescence.

With the aid of the League’s teleport technology it’s a matter of minutes until they’re in Metropolis. They rendezvous with Flash who gapes at Dick, but before he can say anything, Batman growls, “Not the time.”

Flash shakes his head fast enough to blur. “Right. There isn’t any discernible main computer or anything, but—” he vanishes and reappears with a dismembered robotic monkey in hand, “—maybe you can access the link through this?”

Batman accepts the monkey. “You’re certain they’re linked?”

“Well, no. But their movements seem coordinated, so—”

“Understood. Comms are active, get back to the fight. I’ll contact you with my findings,” Batman orders, already lowering the monkey to the ground and pulling tools from his belt.

Flash hesitates, his gaze once again on Dick. “What about him?”

“ _Robin_ ,” Batman growls, his displeasure at Dick’s presence only making the boy smile wider. “Will cover me while I work.”

Flash looks like he wants to ask more questions, but Batman’s tone was final and the fighting won’t stop on its own, so he just says, “Aye, aye captain,” sketches a snarky salute, and vanishes with a crackle of lightning.

“ _Awesome_ ,” Dick whispers.

Then he gets very busy for quite a while.

Batman does eventually figure out how to hijack the wireless signal coordinating the robotic army to short circuit all of them at once, which leaves only the arduous, but no longer dangerous, task of gathering up all the metal carcasses and finding a way to dispose of them safely.

The Justice League, or at least the four members in attendance and Robin, convene on top of a skyscraper in the center of the city to debrief.

Debriefing does not happen.

“Batman, is that a child?” Wonder Woman asks, tilting her head to look at Dick curiously. Her hair and uniform aren’t so much as ruffled. “Did he fight with us?”

“I’m wondering that myself,” Superman adds with raised eyebrows.

Batman’s face is stony (as it tends to be around people who aren’t family), so Dick decides to take the initiative for the sake of making a good first impression.

“I did! Sort of. I mean, I fought and you fought, and we were fighting on the same team, although not really _together_ I suppose.” He frowns at the logistics of that.

This immediately endears him to all three heroes.

“That makes you a brother in arms to me,” Wonder Woman tells him kindly.

He beams at her. “I’m Robin by the way.”

“Nice to meet you Robin,” Flash says amicably.

“ _Finally_ ,” Superman adds a little pointedly in Batman’s direction.

Batman does not growl, but Dick can tell it’s a near thing. Unperturbed by his mentor’s clear discomfort with the entire situation, Dick bounds over to Superman and sticks his hand out. “It’s really nice to meet you, sir,” he says.

Superman looks surprised, but he uncrosses his arms and carefully shakes Dick’s hand. “You too.”

“I’ve heard _all_ about you from Batman,” he goes on, even though that’s not strictly true. He can sense his mentor’s growing alarm behind him, and has to hide the mischief in his eyes behind a brilliant grin. “It’s good to know he has _some_ friends—y’know, other than the bats. Nothing against them of course, they are kind of cute after all, but they also can’t talk.”

There’s a very soft groan of a man resigned to his fate from behind Dick, but he ignores it and moves on to Wonder Woman. She takes his hand with less hesitation. “I was not aware Batman counted us among friends,” she says, but her smile tells Dick she knows exactly what he’s doing and finds it terribly amusing.

Dick winks at her, before moving on to Flash, who’s grinning at him like this is the best day of his life. “Oh yeah. He’s all prickly on the outside, but really Batman’s a big old softie. He told me—”

“ _Robin_ ,” Bruce says sharply, apparently done humoring Dick. “It’s time to go.”

Giving his audience a small bow, Dick returns to Batman’s side, telling him loudly enough for the others to hear, “I don’t know why you don’t bring me around more often B, this was fun.”

Batman glares at him, which Dick easily places as the _’you little shit’_ glare that usually precedes some form of roundabout punishment in the form of training.

The Dark Knight turns abruptly on his heel, cape billowing behind him as he stalks to the edge of the roof and jumps off. Dick follows after him, but at the last second turns around to give an even cheekier imitation of Flash’s mock salute from earlier. “See ya around,” he says, and backflips off the edge of the roof.

Their shocked faces follow him all the way down.

* * *

Dick has officially lost all sense of time when he hears a knock at the door. His alarm clock is on the floor somewhere along the opposite wall of his room, and the drapes are pulled tightly closed, but no matter the time of day, it’s a reasonable enough assumption that the only person who might be knocking at Dick’s door after he made it explicitly clear Bruce wasn’t welcome would be Alfred. Probably bearing more of the food that Dick hasn’t been eating.

“Come in,” he calls weakly, because Alfred has been patient and unobtrusive in his visits and Dick would feel like even more of an asshole if he denied the kind man. Regardless of how he may feel about Alfred’s bedside manner however, Dick still curls around himself protectively with his back to the door as it opens. He doesn’t want to see or be seen right now.

“Jesus Rob, I haven’t seen a pity cocoon this depressing since Iris told Barry off for loading the dishwasher wrong.”

Dick bolts upright. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Wally West chuckles. Gilded in the light from the hallway as he is, it’s impossible for Dick to make out his expression until Wally reaches over and casually flicks on the light switch. Dick hisses in pain as his eyes revolt at the sudden change.

“I’m here for _you,_ bird brain,” Wally says like it’s obvious. “You haven’t been answering any of the Titans’ messages and we’re all worried about you. I’m just the one who drew the short straw.” He flashes a smirk that would usually make Dick roll his eyes and fire back some witty quip, but his response comes out quiet and flat.

“Bullshit. You volunteered.”

Wally’s smile falters, and slips. “Yeah. I did.” A beat. “That bad?”

Dick looks away. “You can tell the team I’m okay. My phone… ” he shoots a guilty look at the lump of broken metal and glass next to his ruined alarm clock, “broke.”

His hopes of being left to wallow are immediately dashed when Wally lets out a put upon sigh, and abuses the Speed Force to settle himself comfortably against the headboard next to Dick. “See, that’s just not going to cut it. You know how bad of a liar I am, and that one’s quite the whopper. We both know Donna would smell it on me a mile away, and then you’d have a lot more to deal with than just little old me, so why don’t you tell your best friend Wally what’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says wearily, curling in on himself once again.

The speedster considers him with a frown, like Dick is a puzzle that’s spontaneously sprouted a new layer of complexity. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he says softly.

“Enlighten me.”

“You’re emulating your parental figure’s coping mechanisms because however well adjusted you try to seem, you were traumatized at a very young age, and, between the Mission and lack of other role models, Bruce managed to convince you that he’s a good example of mental health,” Wally says, not unkindly. “You’re trying to shut us out, because you’re scared and upset.”

It’s easy to forget between the silly jokes and constant fixation on his next meal that Wally is actually really smart. At the moment, Dick doesn’t appreciate it one bit.

When his analysis fails to produce a reply, Wally sighs again. “Well, if you don’t want to talk, I suppose I’ll have to cheer you up through other means.”

With a crackle of controlled lightning, Wally disappears from Dick’s side and reappears standing next to the bed. “Here, put these on.” He tosses a bundle of clothing at Dick’s head.

“Hey!” Dick screeches.

“We’re going for ice cream because your blood sugar is probably criminally low based on the number of meals Alfred implied you’re skipping."

_“We’re not—”_

“We are, and you can either get dressed, or have every tabloid in the country’s front page be a picture of you looking like Gollum.”

Dick hisses at him in a fair imitation of the creature in question, but acquiesces all the same. He even brushes his hair for good measure.

When he exits the bathroom, Wally looks him over before nodding approvingly. “Good. We’re taking the fast way.”

Dick barely has time to brace himself before Wally’s scooped him up and taken off. When the world stops spinning, they’re in an alleyway in the city.

“Come on,” Wally says, grabbing Dick’s wrist and dragging him into the street.

They get their cones, but Wally decides eating at the booths would be too boring, and in another couple seconds they’re on top of a building six blocks away. Dick grumbles in annoyance, but has to hide a small smile behind his ice cream cone.

With Gotham’s closest approximation of sun on his face, and ice cream rapidly filling the belly that feels hungry for the first time in days, Dick feels almost himself again. Or at least less like he wants to hide in the dark and never get out of bed anyway.

Wally chatters pointlessly for a few minutes, telling him about school and the other Titans and everything else that doesn’t really matter but makes the air between them light while coercing soft chuckles from Dick every once in a while. By the time he finally winds down, most of Dick’s ice cream is gone.

“Dick.” Wally’s voice had taken on a serious edge that suits him better than anyone is comfortable with. “Please, tell me what’s wrong.” He bumps their shoulders together. “Secrets make you grumpy.”

An amused smile flits across Dick’s face, but doesn’t last. He stares down at what’s left of the ice cream cone in his hands, picking at the paper wrapper with his finger nails, then setting it aside. “I lost someone,” he finally says.

Wally is silent.

“It was… Batman says it wasn’t my fault, but I should have done more. I should have been _able_ to do more. It was Two-Face—he had Batman and the District Attorney in a double hang man’s trap, so I cut the noose around the District Attorney’s neck, but—” Tears well in his eyes. His breath is coming fast now and he hates that he’s breaking down like this.

Wally doesn’t laugh at him though, he just puts his arm around the smaller boy’s shoulders, and squeezes gently.

“I was so _stupid_ . I should have known Dent would have a back up. I _killed_ that man—”

“No,” Wally cuts in, quiet but firm. “No you didn’t.”

“But—”

“Dick, listen to me. You didn’t kill him, Two-Face did. You did everything you could to save him.”

“Did I?” Dick’s voice cracks.

Wally is undeterred. “ _You did everything you could._ You are a hero Dick, but you’re not perfect or all powerful. No one is. Not even Superman. People die, and sometimes we can’t prevent that, but what matters is that we keep trying. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

He’s sobbing in earnest now, the words hurting as much as they’re cleansing.

“It scares the crap out of me too, but everyone has lost someone on the job. It’s just a part of what we do—the worst part, but not one we can always avoid. It doesn’t make you less of a hero. It doesn’t mean that you should give up.”

He hadn’t even admitted it to himself, but that was exactly what Dick had planned to do. He can’t wrap his head around putting the cape on again, not when someone else could die, but Wally’s right. If he stops, people will still die—more people, in fact. The only difference would be his blissful ignorance. How selfish would that be?

Dick pulls away from his friend’s embrace, wiping the tears from his face and sniffling pathetically. “You’re right,” he says, gratified when his voice only wobbles a little. “We have to keep going.”

It’s not really resolution, not when Dick can feel a fear that never bothered him before wrapping around the base of his spine and taking root, but it’s enough for now.

Wally smiles at him softly. “I’m glad to hear you say it. Now come on, we should get back to the Manor before Alfred finds out I kidnapped you for ice cream before dinner.”

Pulling himself up with Wally’s proffered hand, Dick offers his friend a genuine smile back. “Thank you”

“Anytime, Rob.”

* * *

His back aches. His head aches. His heart aches.

He’s lost track of how long he’s been compressed into the infirmary’s only chair. Hours at least, a day maybe. At first, the chair was comfortable (an intentional aspect of design that Bruce chose it specially for in respect to the considerable amount of time both he and Dick have spent in it getting stitched back together), but nothing stays comfortable after a few hours without moving.

Dick should probably do that. Get up, stretch, maybe even ingest some food. He doesn’t.

He’s drifted in and out of sleep, the dark of unconsciousness crooning to him in direct defiance to the discomfort that would normally keep him awake. The nightmares never let him stay asleep for long though. He never really stopped having them after his parents’ death, but tonight, they’re worse than ever.

He keeps seeing the moment it happened. The moment he saw Batman _break_.

The heart monitor beats a slow, but, thankfully, steady rhythm in Dick’s ear. It’s a cold sound, emotionless and robotic, as if it were something meaningless instead of the only sign of life from the supine man before Dick. He appreciates it, even as he’s learning to detest it.

He’s got Bruce’s hand in his, but it’s cold and limp. No signs of life flicker behind Bruce’s closed eyelids.

Dick shuts his eyes, raising both their hands to his forehead as if bowed in prayer.

Bruce is going to be okay. He has to be. Dick… Dick _can’t_ lose him. Not ever, but especially not now. Not when they’re both so young, still learning each other and how to be a family. Not when Bruce has so much work left to do.

Forcing himself not to consider any alternative but a miraculous and speedy recovery has taken its toll on Dick, and for a moment, he is finally weak. It’s almost a relief to let the tears fall and the sobs come in chest rattling gasps. He presses his father’s knuckles to his forehead and weeps.

He knows this feeling. The panic building in his chest, expanding and compressing and pressurizing— _he knows this._

Bruce’s words, all those years ago, the murmured promise he offered to a child in the midst of breaking.

_You’re not alone. I’m going to protect you._

And he did. He gave Dick the tools to put himself back together, and stood by him while he did. He never faltered or looked away from the jagged mess that Dick had become, he never flinched. He stayed, and he _protected_ him.

And yet Dick sits here, alone and vulnerable. All at once, anger blossoms from the fertile ground of his grief.

“ _Don’t you dare_ ,” Dick hisses aloud, looking up at Bruce with slitted eyes. “Don’t you _dare_ leave me alone. You made a _promise_ , and you’re not _allowed_ to break it, you hear me? Protecting me means sparing me from—from _this_ , okay? So your job’s not done.”

Bruce will never be done. Not while Dick lives, and not while Gotham stands. Not even after both have ceased to be. If he won’t stick around for Dick, then the Mission, at least, must go on. Dick _knows_ Bruce, better than he’s ever known anyone, and he knows the man will never be at peace, which means he’ll never leave Dick like his parents did.

Bruce Wayne _is_ Batman, and Batman can’t ever die. He’s become too large, he means too much. Batman is an ideal, a dream, and the only means this city has to make it happen. Without him… 

Dick’s grip on Bruce’s hand is tight as iron, tight enough to rub bone against bone, but he doesn’t loosen it.

In this place that has become home, with this man who for so long has been synonymous with safety, Dick lets the truth in as the barest whisper.

Bruce is just a man. He is mortal, and one day Dick will lose him just like he lost his parents.

It breaks over him like a tsunami, washing away the foundations of belief he thought were so solid, and rearranging the landscape of his reality.

When the flood stops, Dick feels drained. His breathing is even again, and all that remains of his tears are sparkling tracks on the curves of his cheeks.

If Bruce dies—pain like a knife pierces the beating bruise of his heart—then Dick will have to keep living, like he did after his parents, except this time there will be no helping hand or guiding force. No kind presence to protect him from the worst of his loneliness.

Dick shakes his head to clear it. That’s not true. It’s his panic talking.

He has people. Alfred, the Teen Titans, the Justice League for that matter. He will never be as alone as he was in those first seconds with his parents’ twisted bodies, or for the long nights in that dirty orphanage. He made sure of that with every hand he extended to a new acquaintance, every friendship he nurtured with smiles and charm. With vulnerability and shared burdens.

Sitting by his father’s hospital bed, Dick knows they are not enough.

If Bruce dies, what happens to Robin? Dick has never been a solo act, he doesn’t think Robin can take the strain of being such. And Batman can’t—

The answer comes to Dick like a persistent and ravenous dog scratching at a door firmly shut against it.

If Bruce dies before the Mission is complete, the mantle will fall to Dick.

The panicked pressure in Dick’s chest expands and compresses, filling and squeezing, building and breaking.

He can’t. _He can’t._

“You told me once,” he says, needing Bruce to hear the words even though he knows no one is listening, “that you understood. That you let me be Robin because you wanted to save me from being like you. From being Batman.” 

Bruce had succeeded too. Dick is happy. He’s Robin, full of joy and hope and light. Bruce had set him on that path by helping him get justice, and then move on. Because of Bruce, Dick was able to move past the worst day of his life, and keep living.

Living in the way Bruce never really had.

Being Batman kept Bruce frozen in that moment of heartbreak and agony. It stagnated him, held him back from truly living.

He’d saved Dick from that.

From a life where he never falls in love, cares first and foremost about an impossible goal, keeps secrets and lies as easy as breathing.

When Dick speaks again, his voice is cold in a way it’s never been. Not toward family. “If you leave me to become that, I will never forgive you.”

Bruce doesn’t so much as stir.

* * *

If there’s one thing a vigilante becomes intimately familiar with (besides getting blood out of kevlar), it’s fire escapes. They’re convenient, common, and, as Dick is now learning, pretty much the same in every city.

The one he’s on now is admittedly a little cleaner than most Gotham structures, but the difference is negligible, even though Dick feels uncomfortably conspicuous in his civvies. He’s not sure he’s ever been on a fire escape outside of uniform. Then again, he’s also never been to Superman’s apartment before. Firsts all around.

The sound of keys scraping in a lock filters through the open window at Dick’s back and alerts him that the man himself has arrived home. He can pinpoint the exact moment Clark realizes his apartment has been encroached upon by the hesitation before the door opens.

A smile tugs at the corner of Dick’s mouth as he imagines Clark’s awkward panic as he tries to decide how to play human for whatever petty burglar he no doubt thinks Dick is. The man has the powers of a god, yet all he’s ever wanted was a normal life. Well, that and the helping people thing.

Whatever Clark decides (probably that knowing someone is in his apartment without even opening the door would be impossible for a normal human and therefore suspicious), he gets over his reluctance in a few seconds. The door swings open.

Dick should probably announce himself, but listening to Clark fumble around as he tries to strike a balance between caution and pretending not to suspect anything’s amiss is exactly the kind of distraction Dick needs right now.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last very long before Clark spots the open window, and through it, Dick.

“Robin?” he asks, the over exaggerated bumbling ceasing at once.

Dick turns his head so that Clark can make out his face in profile, letting one half of his smirk show. “No mask tonight.”

It’s a loaded statement. A deliberate choice to bring his visit firmly into the realm of the personal rather than the professional.

He watches the puzzle pieces assemble between the furrow of Clark’s eyebrows as the man slowly approaches him, pausing at the window that’s a little too small for him to comfortably fit through.

Dick’s smirk turns teasing as Clark accepts his fate and inelegantly folds his broad shoulders through the opening. He wobbles on one foot, uses his powers to stabilize himself, and finally manages the hilarious endeavor without falling. It’s a near thing though.

Dick chuckles softly, but Clark just smiles and says, “Not all of us can be trained acrobats.”

Feet swinging over the three story drop, Dick shrugs. “Guess not.”

Clark leans his elbows on the railing beside him, and they both look out over the street. “What are you doing here?”

“Can’t I just be visiting?” His voice is soft.

The obvious deflection earns him a sidelong glance, but there’s no wariness in Clark’s voice, only kind truth. “You can. But you’re not.”

Dick shrugs.

Truthfully, he’s not entirely sure why he’s here himself. He knows the catalyst, and thinking about it still makes the blood in his veins boil, but why _here_ is a mystery.

“Did something happen?” Clark says at length.

“We got in a fight,” Dick says slowly, testing the words out. He doesn’t have to specify who.

“I don’t mean to stick my nose where it doesn't belong,” the phrase could not be more clearly borrowed from his parents, and the country accent that seems to stick to the edges of it draws a fleeting smile out of Dick, “but that seems to be happening more often lately.”

“It does,” Dick agrees tonelessly. Mustering some of his usual lightness, he adds, “Isn't that just what happens between boys and their fathers when they get to be a certain age?”

“Most teenagers don’t feel the need to leave the state to cool off,” Clark points out.

It’s a salient observation, but considering the scale they live their lives on, Dick can’t help but think that this little trip isn’t really any different from visiting a friendly neighbor. “I’m not most teenagers.”

“No. No you’re not,” Clark agrees in the same toneless voice Dick used earlier. “What was the fight about this time?”

Dick sighs. ”What the fight is always about. I’m not a kid anymore and I’m not interested in being treated like one.”

“You’re still only—” Clark starts to point out fairly, but Dick cuts him off tiredly.

“Age isn’t a fair or even accurate measuring stick here, and we both know it. I’m only a couple years away from being older than Bruce was when he adopted me, and when he was my age, he was travelling around the world training in every form of science and combat he could gain access to. I’ve made choices that have saved lives and ended them, albeit indirectly. I’ve saved the world more than once, and, for the record, Bruce didn’t seem to be all that concerned with my age when he agreed to let me risk my life every night as a vigilante before I’d even hit puberty.”

Clark grimaces, but Dick doesn’t relent.

“I _really_ don’t care how old I am, and for any of you—” everyone in the Justice League who’s disrespected and looked down on the younger generation of heroes, no matter how many times they proved themselves, “—to use age as a reason to take away my agency is nothing but hypocrisy.”

The words are a fiery declaration, but his tone is tired and flat. He’s already fought this battle too many times. By now, the speech feels rehearsed, and Clark doesn’t deserve the brunt of his fire anyway.

Clark sighs. “You’re right.”

“Yeah,” Dick really didn’t come here to have his point validated. He already knows he’s right. A heavy silence falls between them like the air before a storm.

Maybe it’s not that his age doesn’t matter, so much as it shouldn’t be measured in years since he was born. Chronologically, Dick is only seventeen, but he feels old in his _bones_. In the torpidity that’s been hounding his every step.

For all he’s tried to keep moving forward, the freedom he used to feel as Robin is starting to feel constricting. Like a collar around his neck. Where his partnership with Bruce used to fit like a glove, now it chafes.

He knows he still has a lot left to learn, but after almost a decade as Batman’s sidekick, he doesn’t think he can do it from Bruce. He’s stagnating, but he’s too scared to face what that might mean for the future.

“How do you know that you’re doing enough good?” Dick asks, apropos of nothing.

Clark hums. “What do you mean?”

His thought-speech link hadn’t been in use when he spoke, but perhaps he needed that bit of spontaneity to get to the core of his reason for being here tonight. He takes a deep breath, and tries to explain.

“Bruce, you, the League—all of us really—we take on all these really big things. The people with powers as dangerous as ours, or with armies like Luthor, or over the top schemes like the Joker, and that’s good because the normal forces of the world couldn’t really take care of those things without us, but sometimes I feel like it’s not enough. Like we’re taking the fast track to doing good, and all the little people get left behind.”

He doesn’t look at Clark, but he can feel the man’s considering gaze on him.

“You know, Bruce and I go on patrol almost every night. We stop a few muggings, and occasionally we catch a guy who wanted to make off with more than just money, but for all the years we’ve been doing it, the streets are still dangerous. People still die.”

This is why he came. This fatigue. If anyone can understand this feeling of helplessness, it has to be the most powerful man in the world.

He finally looks at Clark to find that he’s frowning with deep thought. The sun is still up, and Dick thinks distantly that Clark Kent was designed to reflect sunshine the same way Bruce Wayne was made to hide in the shadows.

“ _Enough good…_ ” Clark muses. “I’m not sure there is such a thing. We can, and probably will, spend our whole lives trying to make the world a better place, but it will never be perfect. That’s just not how this works. There isn’t a finish line we get to cross with nothing but happiness and celebration on the other side, because humanity can never be all one thing. Not all good, but not all bad either.”

Dick looks into himself and finds that his surprise at hearing Superman acknowledge the darkness in humanity is only surface deep.

“Trying to do ‘enough’ is bound to drive you crazy, because if you make your goal unachievable and label it as being a good person, you’ll spend your whole life thinking that you’re a bad one, and that’s not true.” He turns to look Dick in the eye. “I guess my answer is: You’re doing what you can, and that is enough. That will always be enough. _You are a good person._ ”

He hadn’t thought that was in question, but the intensity of Clark’s stare and the blatant certainty behind his words steals Dick’s breath away and knocks something loose deep inside him.

“I think right now,” Clark says carefully, “you might be grappling with something too big to think about and you don’t know the way forward.”

Not trusting his voice, Dick nods.

“I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for. I wish I could, but you’ll have to find them for yourself.” Dick already knew that, but the small scrap of hope left inside him withers anyway. Clark pauses for a moment like he’s thinking what to say next. “Why don’t we head inside and I can make us some dinner?”

Dick gets the impression there’s more Clark wants to say, so with a measured look, he agrees and deftly dismounts from his seat on the railing.

They’re standing face to face now. Clark looks kind and tired and terribly human. He puts a hand on Dick’s shoulder and sighs. “I don’t have answers, but I do have a story. Let me tell you about an old Kryptonian legend that I’ve always drawn comfort and strength from.”

Dick listens. And when Clark has finished and their dinner is eaten, he thanks the man and leaves.

The trip doesn’t give him answers or a path forward, but it plants a seed, and seeds have a way of growing.

* * *

“Where will you go?” Alfred asks, his voice clipped. He doesn’t look up at Dick when he speaks, instead keeping his eyes focused on the clothes he’s folding as if somewhere in their wrinkled depths he might catch a glimpse of the uncertain future in store for his family. 

Dick shrugs, resisting the temptation to say _anywhere that Bruce isn’t._ “Titan’s tower for now. From there, I’ll figure it out.” He’s rooting through his closet now, on his knees as he digs through years of built up clutter for anything he wants to take with him. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be gone, but instinct is telling him to take everything. To erase any trace of himself from this room.

Alfred’s composure is still rock solid, even as he finishes folding the clothes and begins transferring them to a large suitcase propped open on Dick’s bed. “Are you sure that’s wise, Master Richard?”

“Better than staying here,” Dick says shortly.

He can’t stop remembering the way Bruce said it. The tone of his voice, and the slump of his shoulders when he was done yelling. Like a man too tired to go on trying.

Too tired to keep loving Dick.

He knows that’s not true—he does. He’s clinging to the knowledge with everything he has, but he’s also suddenly acutely aware of how ill prepared to raise a child Bruce was. Is.

They’ve been fighting so much recently, and tonight Dick messed up, he knows that. He got himself hurt and… and maybe he’s just finally become more trouble than he’s worth. Bruce can’t really un-adopt Dick, but he’s starting to wonder if the man might wish he could.

Dick has to pause in his packing and take a few deep breaths to keep the tears from flowing. _It’s not true,_ he tells himself over and over again. _I made a mistake, but he still loves me. He still loves me._

Alfred finishes packing somewhere behind him, and sighs. “I expect you to call,” he says.

A sound between a gasp and a sob slips past Dick’s lips, but he doesn’t cry. Instead, he forces himself to his feet and turns around to face Alfred. “Of course,” he says, smiling fondly despite everything.

“And,” Alfred hesitates, the uncertainty so incredibly foreign in his usually precise British accent, “you’ll visit someday, won’t you?”

Dick doesn’t respond right away. The question hangs in the air between them, a knife that twists further and further with each passing second.

He wishes there was a way to do this without losing both of them, but the Manor will always be Bruce’s and after tonight, Dick’s not sure he’ll be welcome in it anymore. It breaks his heart to abandon the man who’s become like a grandfather to him, but Dick honestly doesn’t know.

“I love you, Alfred,” he says instead.

“And I you Master Richard,” Alfred says softly, “but that wasn’t an answer.”

Dick can’t hold his gaze, so he looks down at his shoes instead. “I don’t know. I want to say yes, but… someday could be a _really_ long time, and…” he trails off.

No. This isn’t right. None of this is right. Bruce doesn’t get to just throw him out like this—that’s not how it works.

Dick looks up, a new fierceness in his gaze as he starts again. “Actually, yes. I _will_ come back, and that’s a promise because Bruce is my family. And families persevere. Always. So no matter how fucked up this all is, Gotham will always be my home, and Bruce will always be my father. Whether he wants to be or not.”

Alfred’s eyes go wide with surprise for a moment, before softening into something like pride. “Yes, Master Richard. Right you are.”

“Can I just…?” Dick asks, and doesn’t wait for an answer before crossing the space between them in three short strides and enveloping the butler in a hug.

Alfred gladly hugs him back. They hold each other in silence for a long moment until at last, Alfred says, “There will always be a bed waiting for you here.”

Dick bites his lip so hard he draws blood. “Thank you,” he rasps, and clings to the promise with everything he has. His next words are barely a whisper. “You’re my family too Alfred. I won’t abandon you. Not really.”

A rattling breath blows past his ear, and if he didn’t know better he might’ve guessed that Alfred was crying too. “I know.”

It’s a while yet before they return to packing.

* * *

“Dickie!”

Dick’s head jerks up from the book he’d buried it in at the exclamation. For a second, his heart pounds and his hand discreetly slips below the table to rest on his backpack. Depending on the nature of the threat, he could throw it to disorient his attacker, or hold onto it to use as a—

The second ends, and his gaze lands on Cindy in all her cherubic blond glory. Dick smiles at her as his muscles relax and he leans back in his chair, throwing his arm casually over the back of the one next to him in the picture of charm and grace.

“Mornin’ Cindy. Care to join me?” he asks.

As always, Cindy looks beautiful—a fact having as much to do with her radiant smile as it does with the bright pink top and snug jeans. Dick met her on his first day when they sat next to each other in organic chemistry and was won over in a matter of seconds by her vivacity.

“Thanks,” she says, depositing her tray of food onto the table and taking the seat across from him. “Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you up this early,” she teases.

Dick runs a hand through his hair, absently noting that it’s getting a little shaggy. “What can I say? My sleep schedule has been slow to adjust to the modern day torture of 8 am classes.”

“Is being a night owl a Gotham thing, or a Dick Grayson thing?” Cindy asks with a smirk as she starts digging into her omelet.

Dick laughs. Hudson University isn’t really _that_ far from Gotham, but apparently Gothamites are still a rarity, and he’s noticed a pervasive interest in his home town. From what he’s gathered, not everywhere is a den of crime with multiple city wide attacks a month. Shocking.

The part of Dick that was in Batman’s base of operations for all of five minutes before naming it the ‘Batcave’ understands the excitement, but the part of him that’s been kidnapped and tortured by pretty much every notable villain in Gotham wants to vomit every time an overeager frat boy asks him if he’s ever felt up Poison Ivy.

Cindy’s not like that though, so Dick winks at her, and says, “Little bit of both.”

She giggles, and it’s a nice sound. He can’t help but think that if things were different, he might try to ask her out. As it is, he’s spoken for. Probably, anyway. He’s not really sure how to classify his relationship with Starfire, but whatever it is, he knows he’s all in.

“That’s what you get for scheduling so late. One could almost believe you didn’t want to think about it until the last minute,” Cindy says, her tone playfully disapproving.

Dick’s grin fades a little.

College wasn’t something he’d ever put a lot of thought into before this, actually. In fact, he’d hardly put any thought at all into what adult life would really be like outside of hero work. Hudson is far from a top tier college, and he barely even got in.

He had the test scores for it, sure, but his application was otherwise lackluster. School never did a good job of holding his interest, and it really didn’t help that he almost never turned in homework. For some reasons teachers didn’t like the old ‘Riddler stole my homework, became personally offended by it, and then burned it for daring to have a grammatical error’ excuse.

He’d thought that would change now that he’s doing the whole school thing full time, but if anything, the problem’s only gotten worse. He can hardly sit still long enough to get through a whole lecture, and even if he manages to stay in his seat until the end, his mind always seems to drift off, and he can never remember what they actually discussed.

He can coast by in most of his subjects just on what Bruce taught him for his _extracurriculars_ , but not all.

Shaking himself internally, Dick finally says, “I had other things on my mind.” He throws in a suggestive eyebrow wiggle that makes Cindy laugh.

“Well, you better take care of them because I hear this weekend Greek row is going to turn into a war zone.” Cindy keeps talking. Something about a bet between fraternities and a party Dick just _has_ to check out, but it’s lost in the ringing of his ears.

It’s not—it’s not a big deal or anything, but she has no fucking idea what a war zone is actually like. _It’s just a turn of phrase,_ he tells himself, trying to focus on what she’s saying again, but he can’t. He’s thinking about buildings torn down to their barest skeletons and buried in rubble, the screams of children separated from their parents and parents looking for their children, the sick maniacal laughter of the Joker-gassed, the flash of red that can mean so many things on a battlefield—and often means all of them at once.

“... Dick, Dick are you okay?” Cindy is looking at him with wide, concerned eyes, and he realizes she’s probably said his name a few times by now.

“Yeah,” he forces himself to take a deep breath, embarrassed by how noticeably it shakes. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Cindy looks uncertain, but she doesn’t call him out on it, and an uneasy silence falls between them.

These ‘episodes’ haven’t been happening often exactly, but they seem to strike at random. Something that triggered one yesterday could be totally fine tomorrow, so Dick has no way of predicting when they’ll happen. It’s infuriating and for some reason, they seem to be getting worse, not better—which doesn’t make any sense. Taking a break from the hero life was supposed to clear his head, and help him figure out what to do next, but all it seems to be doing is making him more and more miserable.

“I—I don’t mean to pry,” Cindy says, eyes fixed firmly on her plate. “But when you were in Gotham, did you… well, what I mean to say is, do things like _that_ happen to you because you grew up there?”

Dick straightens in his seat. “Things like what?” he asks smoothly.

She bites her lip, eyes flicking up to meet his gaze for just a second before quickly darting away again. “Nevermind,” she says. “My mom called me last night,” she tacks on in a clear bid to change the subject.

More than happy to let her, Dick leans back in his seat again and asks, “Oh? Did she have any updates on the fudge situation?”

Cindy’s grin returns full force. “You remembered,” she says, then she launches into a recap of her mother’s call. “She did actually. Apparently the first recipe was total bogus, but now she’s… ”

Cindy is kind, friendly, and beautiful. So why does Dick suddenly want desperately to get away from her?

He sits there politely, nodding along to what she’s saying, but all he can think about is how much he misses the lightning that crackles beneath Wally’s skin, and the sharp edge Roy puts on everything. He longs for Starfire’s otherworldly energy, and Barbara’s grounded intensity. He wants the people who _understand._

The people who would know better than to comment when he freezes like that. Who wouldn’t _have_ to comment, because Dick would be able to just tell them where he went.

And… and Dick can’t do this, can he? He hung up the cape and stored away the pixie boots, but no amount of time or distance could ever turn him into a civilian. At heart, he’s a vigilante, and that’s not going to stop being true just because Dick, Bruce, or anyone else says so.

This—college, safety, inactivity—just isn’t for him. Every moment he wastes in a boring lecture could be better spent saving someone’s life. He shouldn’t be hiding here, licking his wounds in a college dorm, he should be _out there,_ fighting the good fight and doing what he can to make the world a better place. 

_This_ is the answer that Dick has been searching for. Admittedly it’s not the one he was hoping for, but at least it’s _real_. It’s a direction to follow, and isn’t it about goddamn time he got his ass in gear, and started moving again?

He thinks so.

* * *

“Why Blüdhaven?” Wally asks him later.

Dick smiles. “Why not?” he replies, but Wally doesn’t let it go.

“I thought you were trying to get away from Gotham.” His tone implies the rest. Blüdhaven is barely two hours outside the city limits and carries more similarities than differences in the creases of its map. If Dick was looking for a change, Blüdhaven isn’t it.

The truth is, it’s because Dick can’t help himself. There’s hardly one good thing to say about the whole city, but it lures Dick in like a siren waiting to swallow him whole anyway, because while Dick might not have been _born_ a Gothamite, the circumstances of his birth have been washed away and replaced by a decade’s worth of life in the city.

Some part of him will always be drawn to the dark, dirty places of the world now. The ones where there are no more innocent people, because life is too rough for children to stay children for long. Gothamites are fighters, every single one of them. A people who flirt with pestilence, court famine, live hand in hand with death, and never stop going to war. _That_ is what’s in Dick’s blood now, regardless of the peace his parents passed down to him through birth.

Blüdhaven isn’t his home, but it’s close enough.

Wally wouldn’t understand that though, so Dick says something he will instead. “It felt right.”

* * *

“So, I heard you took a trip upstairs,” Roy Harper says by way of greeting.

Dick ignores the not-quite-question and roughly reels his friend into a bear hug. “What are you doing here man?” he asks, smile a mile wide as he pulls back.

Roy, still technically in the hallway outside Dick’s apartment, grins right back. “I was in the area, thought I’d drop by.”

Cocking an amused eyebrow, Dick let’s Roy in, closing the door behind him. “Of course, because Star is _so_ close to Blüdhaven.”

“Yup,” Roy agrees, popping the ‘p’ as he shamelessly snoops around Dick’s shabby living room. “Damn, you live like this?” he asks.

Dick shoots him a look, but Roy is already putting up his hands in surrender. “Kidding, I’ve crashed in much worse places.”

“Is that why you’re really here?” Dick asks without judgement, noticing for the first time the bag slung over Roy’s shoulder.

The archer shrugs. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

“Couch is all yours.”

“Thanks man.” He tosses the bag onto said couch before quickly following it down.

“Want anything to drink?” Dick asks as he wanders toward the kitchen. “Coffee? Water?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Dick gets himself a glass of water before returning to the living room and slumping into his beat up arm chair, the only other place to sit in the room. “So how have you been?”

Roy shrugs. “Alright. I’ve been bouncing around for a bit, figuring some shit out. You know how it is.” He smirks. “Certainly nothing as interesting as what’s been up with _you_ though.” Dick scoffs, but Roy doesn’t relent. “Come on, fess up. I know you got the official summons and everything, so what did they want?”

Dick groans, his head lolling back against the padded back of his chair. “You sure you wanna do this right now? You just got here.”

That pulls a snort out of Roy. “And what exactly do we have to talk about that’s not mask shit? The weather?”

Dick laughs, waving him off. “Yeah, alright. They wanted to offer me a spot."

“A… parking spot?”

“No dumbass, a spot on the team. They were offering me membership to the Justice League.”

Roy whistles lowly. “I had a hunch it was something like that, but _damn_. Didn’t realize I was crashing with a big shot Leaguer now, should I ask for your autograph? Or would that be exploitation?”

“You’re not, actually,” Dick says, as casually as he can. “I turned them down.”

“You _what?_ ”

Dick sinks lower in his chair. “I couldn’t do it. I’ve got too much going on, and it’s not like I can just drop the Titans because I got a better job offer,” he says, shooting Roy a brief apologetic glance at the mention of the new team. Roy waves him off.

“Dick, excuse me for being blunt, but that’s bullshit,” he says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I’m sure that’s _part_ of the reason you turned them down,” Roy allows in response to Dick’s sounds of offense, “but I still remember when we were kids and all you wanted was to be a part of the League. Shit’s gotten rocky between you and your old man, but you can’t honestly tell me that’s changed, can you?”

“No. No it hasn’t,” Dick says quietly.

“Then what’s the real issue?”

Dick sighs, closing his eyes. He thinks about not answering, but this is _Roy_ . If anyone is going to understand rocky mentor relationships, it's him. “I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be under their thumb like that, not right now. And whatever they might’ve said, I know that’s what it would be like. I’d be entering as a junior member, which would put me at the very bottom of a pecking order that has _him_ at the top. They were offering me all the recognition and respect I ever wanted, but in that moment it all just felt like they were trying to put me on another leash.”

All seven of the core founding members had been there, but Dick hadn’t had eyes for anyone but Bruce. Couldn’t have looked anywhere else but at the man who years ago had told him with such unshakeable certainty that he would one day lead the League, and who had just months ago fired him.

He hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words to Bruce since that night, and suddenly the invitation to the Watch Tower had arrived, and Dick was being asked to join a team that would put him directly under Bruce’s command again. There were probably a hundred factors leading to that moment, but it didn’t feel like an accomplishment. It felt like Bruce was trying to circumvent an actual adult conversation about their feelings and relationship by shoving Dick back into subservience and calling it reconciliation.

Joining the League was supposed to be a step forward, and Bruce had made it feel like something dirty.

“Kinky,” Roy says after a long moment, and as intended, it startles a laugh out of Dick. “Really though, I get it.”

“I knew you would.”

“For what it’s worth, you made the right decision, so good job staying true to yourself and all that crap.”

Roy’s joking of course and Dick already knows that anyway, but it’s oddly comforting to hear someone else say it. Nobody in the Watch Tower had felt that way. “Thanks.”

“What do you say we call Wally and make this a proper reunion then?” Roy asks. “To celebrate you sticking it to the man.”

Dick quirks a brow. “Is that what happened?”

“Hell yeah,” Roy says emphatically. “Now please tell me you told them where exactly they could shove their offer.”

Dick dissolves into laughter. God he missed this.

* * *

It’s the first time Dick has set foot in the Manor in months, and it is taking every ounce of control left in his body not to trash the place and run.

He already sat through a truly excruciating meeting with Bruce, he met the new kid (black hair, blue eyes, skinny limbs— _he looks like a fucking carbon copy of Dick at that age_ ), and every second the anger in him has grown some new and interesting thorn.

 _It’s been decided,_ Bruce said. As if Jason was blessed by the gods themselves to take what _belongs_ to Dick. As if Bruce was some grand arbiter of all that is fair and just. As if Robin was nothing more than a job title that could be filled by anyone.

Dick should have punched him.

That thought is precisely why Dick should get the hell out of Gotham as soon as possible, but there’s one more stop to make.

Dick forces himself to pause outside the kitchen door. He loves and respects Alfred, so of course he’ll honor the man’s request to speak with him, but he really doesn’t want to. He wants to yell and rage and scream at the world. This anger has been in him since Bruce fired him (like that was a power he had, like he had the _right—_ ), but seeing Jason has made it _explode_ , and he needs desperately to expel it before it eats him alive.

He needs release, but Alfred deserves better than that, so Dick breathes. Breathes like he was taught to. Gathering all the malice and fury into his lungs, and letting them out on the exhale. It’s little more than an illusion of peace, but hopefully it's an illusion that will at least get him through this conversation.

He opens the door, a smile already on his face. “Hey Alfie.”

Alfred is elbow deep in dish water and soap suds, but at the sound of Dick’s voice, he extricates himself, wiping his hands on a dish towel. His eyes are warm, and the Manor may feel like foreign ground now, but Alfred is still home.

“Good evening, Master Richard.”

Dick’s calm becomes a little more real as he strides across the room and hugs the butler. “I told you I’d be back,” he mumbles into Alfred’s shoulder. “I missed you."

Alfred makes a sound in his throat that indicates he finds the display highly improper, but hugs Dick back just as tightly anyway. “And I you.”

Even now, Dick isn’t exactly at a shortage for hugs. Starfire sees to that, and even if he didn’t have her, Dick has the sort of presence that seems to inspire hugs. Couple that with his unabashed penchant for asking for them, and he’s never had a problem finding physical contact, but there’s something different about a hug from one of them men who helped raise him. From family.

Dick soaks it up as much as he can before pulling back.

“How was your meeting with Master Bruce?” Alfred asks.

The warm feeling vanishes. “Not good,” he says darkly.

A raised silver eyebrow tells him that his answer is insufficient and urges him to elaborate, so he does. Explosively.

“Am I really supposed to be _okay_ with this? I’ve been gone barely a year, and he’s already giving my place in his life to some new kid.” He starts pacing. “Bruce said he fired me because what we do is too dangerous—which is completely ridiculous, by the way—but now he’s letting some untrained kid from nowhere that he’s known all of a couple months out with him? It’s insane.”

He wants Alfred to agree with him. Needs him to.

The butler takes his time examining the perfectly straight creases of his cuffs before replying, “Master Jason is not replacing you—“

Dick snorts. “That is _exactly_ what’s happening.”

Alfred shoots him a warning look that invokes years of lectures about interrupting. “As I was saying, he is not replacing you, because you are, in short, irreplaceable. You are Master Bruce’s son; his love for you does not, and shall never, waver. Opening his heart to another does not impact the depth of his feelings for you, because love is an infinite resource that cannot be so easily overtaxed.”

It’s an echo of words Dick himself had spoken years ago when he told Bruce that his heart was big enough for many families. That loving and accepting Bruce as his father would not be a disservice to his parents.

The logic of it should soothe his burning anger, but it doesn’t, and his next words come out more heated than he would ever wish to be with the man who is his grandfather in every way that counts. “And what about Robin.”

Alfred sighs, like Dick is being intentionally difficult. “Master Richard—”

“Robin wasn’t just a costume or a job. It was the name my mother gave me, the uniform I fashioned after theirs, the role I created from scratch so that I could do good in this world. _Jason_ ,” the name tastes like bile in his mouth, “has absolutely no right to it. And for that matter, neither does Bruce. Robin is _mine_. He had no right to take it from me, and he has no right to give it away.”

“Would you want it back?” Alfred asks calmly.

“That’s not the point,” Dick snaps. “Maybe in the universe where Bruce respected me enough for leaving to have been my decision, I would have given my blessing for someone else to take up the mantle, but there is a huge difference between giving something freely and having it stolen from you. Can’t you see how deeply _not okay_ this is?” He’s pleading.

Alfred’s watching him with sympathetic eyes, but his position does not waver. “I understand your frustration—”

_“Frustration?”_

“—but that young boy out there is alone in this world and in an unfamiliar place. He’s got a good heart, and he could do great things, if only someone gave him a chance. Master Bruce is trying to do that. Does he not remind you of someone?”

“Oh, I noticed _exactly_ how much he reminds me of someone,” Dick snarls. “Almost like Bruce is trying to recreate something because his pet project got too old.”

Alfred’s eyes turn to steel. “I will have to kindly ask you to never speak about yourself, or Master Bruce, that way in my presence again.”

Dick looks at the floor, jaw clenching.

“That boy is your family now. He needs your support. And, for that matter, so does Master Bruce.”

The worst part is, it’s true. It’s so incredibly petty for Dick to be holding his own feelings against this _stranger_ . It has _always_ been his job to support Bruce, and he failed in that, so Bruce fired him. He can rage at the man for the unfairness of it all until the heat death of the universe, but the truth will still be there, waiting for Dick to finally escape his own denial. This is his fault, and he should be taking responsibility. 

But even with the guilt slowly seeping through Dick like ice water poured into his veins, he can’t do it. He fixes his gaze on a point over Alfred’s shoulder, not daring to look the man in the eye, and says, “Well they can’t have it.”

Dick leaves without saying goodbye. This time, he doesn’t make any promises to return.

* * *

Jason’s funeral is inappropriately _—cruelly—_ on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The sun is peeking out from behind unusually light clouds, dappling the Manor’s small cemetery with gold, and the air is alight with bird song and insect buzzing.

On a stand before its freshly dug grave, Jason’s casket sits, deepest black and glinting in the sunlight. It’s closed, because the boy now resting inside of it was beaten half to death with a crowbar then sent the rest of the way by ten pounds of C4. There isn’t much of him left.

Not much, but enough for Bruce to erect a monument in the cave with the tattered remains of the costume he was wearing when he died. The costume Dick designed. When Dick read the plaque, he had to run for all he was worth to reach an appropriate receptacle before he threw up.

_A good soldier._

Dick could have hit Bruce for that, if the man weren’t so gone that he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Or worse—enjoyed it.

They haven’t said so much as a word to one another since Dick arrived. Bruce hasn’t spoken at all, actually, and for his part, Dick doesn’t have anything to say to someone who didn’t even have the balls to tell him what happened to Jason himself.

Dick found out from Superman. _Superman_.

He’s right to be angry, but Dick also can’t help but notice that he gets angry every time he has to grieve. He’s too _young_ to know this about himself, to have multiple examples to hold up as proof, but there it is. He chooses not to dwell on it for the moment.

Through some sorcery by Bruce’s publicists, Jason Todd-Wayne’s death is declared a tragic accident, and the Wayne family dodges any further questioning by begging a period of mourning. Dick assumes the publicists had to beat Viki Vale away with a stick, but it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that they’re left to bury Jason in peace.

Clark and Diana stopped by an hour ago to give their condolences, although Dick has no idea how they even knew today was the funeral. He didn’t mention it and he can be reasonably certain Bruce didn’t either.

At first, their few words were fairly standard, but just as they were about to leave, Diana placed a hand on Dick’s shoulder, looked him squarely in the eye, and said, “He was a warrior worthy of the stars.”

Dick nearly lost it right there. Wonder Woman was Jason’s favorite hero; he would have shit his pants if he heard her say that.

They leave, and then it’s just Bruce, Alfred, Dick, and that goddamn casket.

It’s no surprise that Dick is the one to give the eulogy. He’s no poet, but at least he can say more than five words in a row.

When the time comes, he steps forward, and puts a hand on the casket. The lacquer is so glossy that he can see himself in it, and he looks a mess, but he sets his jaw, and dredges up the words from deep inside of him.

“Jason Todd,” he begins, thinking of Diana, “was a warrior. He probably fought his way out of the womb, and he certainly didn’t stop there. Every day was a battle for him. A new challenge, and a new threat. It made him a hell of a soldier, but a very broken kid.” _Just how we like them,_ he thinks, and hates himself for it.

He’s vaguely aware of Alfred and Bruce behind him, but it’s as if they’ve fallen away. The whole world has. These words are for Dick, Jason, and whatever comes after death.

“He was fifteen years old. _Fifteen_ . And in the little time that he had, he did more good for this world than most people manage in their entire lives. It’s just—it’s so _unfair_ .” Dick’s voice rises in pitch. “He deserved better than this. He deserved to have a happy, full life where he felt safe and loved not—” _not us. Not Bruce who probably never said ‘I love you’ and me who only ever fought with him._ “Not what he got.”

Dick takes a deep breath. Jason deserves a better eulogy than a testament to Dick’s guilt.

“He never let that snuff out his spark though. He grew up in the darkest corners of this world, and there was still a fire in him like nothing I’ve ever seen before. A challenge, and a defiance. He saw the very worst things humanity has to offer, but he decided to stand up for it anyway, and when someone stood in his way, he gave them a wicked smile and an even more wicked kick in the balls. He was bold, and uncompromising, and we loved him for that.”

Dick doesn’t let his voice shake, because he was a shit brother, but he refuses to fall apart now. He failed Jason in life, but in death, he can do this much for him.

“He had the audacity to live. To survive. To keep fighting, even when everything was stacked against him. He was irreverent and funny, snarky and caring, and there wasn’t a bone in his body that didn’t feel the pull towards being a hero, because behind the walls he built around himself, Jason was a protector. A hero. A—” Despite his resolve, Dick chokes on what’s very nearly a sob. “A good _Robin_.”

Did Dick ever tell him that? He’d eventually made his (uneasy and strained) peace with Bruce, and he’d stopped protesting Jason’s right to wear the costume, but had he ever actually spoken to the boy about it? Explained why he’d been upset, and told Jason he’d accepted him?

He hadn’t. It had never been the right time.

Dick had every opportunity to try and build something with Jason, but he’d kept putting it off. He’d thought that they had all the time in the world. That he could wait until he was less angry, until Jason had softened, but it turns out they didn’t have any time at all.

And if Dick could have just been there more, maybe Jason would have called him for advice or help before he—

Or maybe not.

Whether Dick’s mistakes killed Jason or not, the fact remains that Dick missed his chance to be a real brother. He hadn’t been ready when Jason came, and now he’s paying for that.

He should have been better.

A gloved hand wraps around Dick’s shoulder. “That was well said, Master Richard,” Alfred says softly. “I think it’s time.”

Silently, he and Bruce heft the coffin between them and place it in the grave. For a split second as he places the weight on his shoulder, Dick is at a different funeral with a bigger coffin— _two_ bigger coffins—but reality snaps back into place quickly.

When Bruce hands him a shovel, Dick doesn’t point out that they could have hired someone to do this, or at least rented proper equipment. He understands intimately why Bruce wants this to be done by his own two hands.

As one, they start piling the dirt in.

Their jackets are cast to the side, and their sleeves rolled up. Grave dirt soon coats their fine clothing, but neither of them cares, and Alfred doesn’t say a thing. The sun shines on.

When they finish, there’s a rough rectangle of freshly turned earth, and Dick wishes he could sink into it and never climb back out. It’s no less than he deserves, but he shakes the thought off quickly, and in its place, he’s left with a solemn resolution.

“I am never,” he says quietly, staring at the grave, “ _ever_ doing that again.” No more funerals, or caskets, or dead loved ones. No more.

When he turns to Bruce, the man’s eyes are already on him and for the first time there’s a spark of something in them. Understanding, and pity maybe. Like Bruce knows that Dick’s promise is that of a naïve child. An agonized plea to an uncaring universe for mercy.

Bruce looks away first.

They go their separate ways from the grave, Bruce and Alfred to the Manor, and Dick to his car. It’s a long drive back to Blüdhaven.

* * *

Tim Drake introduces himself by handing Dick a stack of photos. There are words too, but Dick doesn’t catch any of them once he gets a look at what's in those pictures.

Him. As Robin.

There are over a dozen of them, and as Dick starts flipping through, he’s horrified to find that he’s not the only subject. Bruce and Jason are both there too.

They aren’t the blurry conspiracy shots that sometimes pop up on the internet either, these are high quality. Some taken in the middle of a fight, and some taken in static moments. One even features a smiling Dick looking _almost_ at the camera.

None of them are quite damning in regards to secret identity, but the fact that even one of them should be as clear as they are is more than just a problem. It’s cataclysmic.

Dick’s gaze snaps up to the boy— _the threat_ —in front of him.

When Tim first approached him, Dick had mistaken him for a fanboy. He was young and a little anxious looking with middle class clothing and a good looking but unremarkable face—easy enough to categorize and dismiss—but now that he knows what to look for, Dick finally notices what’s beneath those features. Intelligence too sharp for a civilian and eyes like pools of black ice.

It reminds him a bit of Lex Luthor, actually, but even with proof of the danger Tim poses to everything Dick loves in his hands, his gut tells him that the kid isn’t a villain. The potential might be there, but the kid’s posture is open and his expression is still somewhere between awe and desperation.

Tim finished talking quite a while ago, and Dick gets the impression it’s his turn now, so he looks back at the photos, and asks, “Where did you get these?” Because that’s the smart question. The detective’s question.

“I took them.” Tim says hesitantly. As if Dick might have misinterpreted the situation, he adds, “I know you were Robin and I know Bruce Wayne is Batman. I’ve known for a while. I also know that Jason Todd became Robin after you left, but now he’s gone, and Batman still needs a Robin.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dick snaps.

This kid (Dick needs to stop thinking of him as a kid. Tim has proved three times over by now that, for better or worse, he’s not to be underestimated.) is claiming that he managed to follow and photograph _Batman_ without ever getting caught.

And he knows their identities.

It’s only through the haze of his horror that Dick catches the last bit of what Tim said. _Batman needs a Robin._ A feeling like a hundred squirming snakes settles in Dick’s belly as he starts to realize what Tim wants from him.

As if he can smell Dick’s fear, Tim hammers the final nail in the coffin. “You’re the only one who can help,” he pleads. “Batman needs you—Bruce needs you. Be Robin again. Save him. Save Gotham.”

Dick very nearly flinches away, but manages to hold himself steady. The fear that moments ago was just a looming dread, suddenly grows legs and starts running, Dick in tow. 

It’s a foregone conclusion that he can’t do what Tim’s asking. Between his currently tenuous relationship with Bruce, the man’s volatile grief, their combined guilt, and the fact that Dick is a full grown adult now with a life and a job that no longer involves taking orders from the man who _fired_ him, they wouldn’t make it a day without murdering each other—if Dick could even make it into the costume, that is—but Dick knows the look in Tim’s eye, and it is _terrifying_.

It’s the same sort of calm that Bruce carries with him everywhere. It says that Tim may be desperate, but he’s not quite hopeless. He _wants_ this to work—very badly going by the tension in his shoulders— but he doesn’t need it to. He still feels in control, which can only mean he has some sort of back-up plan for if Dick turns him down, and for a boy who holds such certainty that he’s right, that only leaves so many ways that this could be going.

Tim is going to put someone in that costume if it kills him, and with every horrified second that ticks by, Dick is growing increasingly certain that it _will_.

Dick has to talk him out of this. He has to explain what it was like to bury his little brother. To see the tattered remains of Jason’s uniform in a glass display case, and imagine the sort of damage that must have been done to him before he died to soak it in that much blood.

He knows that Jason’s death wasn’t his or Bruce’s fault— _but it also sort of was._ They created Robin together, they created a _good soldier_ , and it was only a matter of time before someone died because of it. If it hadn’t been Jason, it would have been the next poor kid to take the mantle, and this right here might be Dick’s only chance to stop it from happening again.

This is his chance, but he has no idea what to say. Tim believes that what he’s asking of Dick is right and just and _necessary_. He believes it in the way sinners spend their last breath on their first prayer and sailors trust the stars to guide their way.

Dick doesn’t know what to say, because there isn’t anything he _can_ say, and _that_ is frustrating.

“Kid, you’re messing with stuff you don’t understand.” He knows he sounds cold, but at this point there’s nothing to be gained by letting Tim down gently besides the prolongment of this conversation. “I _can’t_ be Robin again. Trust me, Bruce doesn’t want me in Gotham.”

Confusion flashes across Tim’s face for a fraction of a second before the boy shutters. Whatever expressiveness he had a moment ago disappears, and in its wake, Dick’s left to wonder if any emotion he saw in the boy was real at all. “Fine,” he says, his voice utterly flat.

The word guts Dick, but he’s used to this particular cocktail of guilt and self loathing. It’s not fair of him to begrudge Tim for hating him for this when he already hates himself for it.

He’s helpless to do anything but watch as Tim takes the photos from his hands and swiftly packs them away. It’s impossible to read his expression, and for a second, Dick can’t help but think that he might actually get along quite well with Bruce. Birds of a feather and all that.

When Tim straightens up again, the storm in his eyes—the only hint of a boy beneath the blankness—has gone still. His next word is nothing but a muttered promise, meant for himself and perhaps something much larger, but definitely not Dick. “Fine.”

Then he leaves.

And Dick is left behind with the nagging sensation that he’s going to need to get used to the sight of Tim Drake walking away. 

* * *

Tim stares up at Dick with wide, baby blue eyes, and Dick has no idea how he ever even imagined there was danger in them.

“Is it—I mean—” Tim cuts himself off, biting his lip and shifting from foot to foot. He forces himself to take a deep breath before asking again, “What do you think?”

Dick thinks that he looks breakable. He’s pale and skinny and barely comes up to Dick’s chest. He knows that Tim’s been working out with Bruce everyday to try and do something about those facts, but weightlifting can’t solve height impairment.

The worst part of seeing him like this is that he knows from experience that they make coffins in exactly Tim’s size. They shouldn’t have to, but they do, and if Dick’s going to avoid burying Tim in one, he needs to do better this time. _Be_ better. So he swallows his righteous outrage and smiles instead of giving into the urge to cry.

“You look amazing Timmy.”

A grin lights up Tim’s face. “Thanks! I know pants weren’t in the original design, but Alfred and I figured everybody’d be able to tell I was a different Robin anyway, so it’d be okay if we made a few changes.”

The words brush up against a still fresh bruise on Dick’s heart, but he pushes that pain away. He can’t think about Jason right now. Tim deserves better than that. “‘Course it’s okay. You’ve got to make the role your own,” he says, buoyant in a way he does not feel.

Tim looks self consciously down at himself. “I… yeah. My own,” he whispers with a sort of quiet wonder.

Dick’s heart melts. _That_ , is what Robin should be. Hope and joy and boundless energy. A symbol for a brighter future.

It's a fool's dream to ever think of trying to keep Tim away from this. The boy’s barely had the costume for a week, and he’s already fallen as deeply in love with it as Jason or Dick ever had. 

Seeing him like this… it shifts something into place in Dick’s mind, and he finally understands why Bruce let Jason become Robin in the first place. Why he’s letting Tim take up the mantle now. Tim’s circumstances are not the same as his and Jason’s were, but as he gazes down fondly at his new uniform, somewhere deep in the depths of his eyes, Dick sees a chip of ice begin to melt.

He doesn’t know Tim very well yet, and certainly not enough to understand him, but he can say with absolute certainty that, in his own way, Tim needs this. That he’s going to be good at this. Quite possibly one of the best.

And isn’t that just fucking terrifying?

In a casual display of control that also conveniently siphons off some of the anxious energy flowing through Dick, he pulls out one of his escrima sticks and reflexively begins flipping it in the air. It lands back in his palm with a satisfying smack.

“What do you say we go on patrol, kid? Just you and me?” Dick asks, grin confident and welcoming.

Tim looks up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Really?”

Dick is intimately familiar with the spike of panic in his gut at Tim’s tone of voice, the hopeful note in it giving away the admiration Tim feels for him. The trust he has in him. Trust that Dick could betray at any moment.

Tim is his baby brother now though, so Dick refuses to let himself give into the fear of letting him down. He’s responsible for Tim, and he can’t let himself be afraid of that. Him being afraid of feeling like this for a little brother is exactly what got Jason killed.

He swallows the flutter of nerves, and forces his expression from confident to downright cocky as he ruffles Tim’s hair. “Dork.” he says affectionately. “ _Yes,_ really.”

And for the first time, Tim doesn’t shy away from the contact.

* * *

Tonight is a bad night.

Dick doesn’t let himself have many of those anymore, but this one… there is no distraction large enough to keep this from being a bad night, so he lays on the floor of his dirty apartment and watches the ceiling fan go round and round in lazy circles. His blinds are shut tight, and any clock is out of his line of sight, so it’s impossible to tell how long he’s been here, but Dick has learned through years of practice that he’ll _know_ when the day is over. He’s grown a sixth sense for this particular anniversary.

It’s the one day he’s never wanted to be around people. The single day each year that is for him—and him alone—to watch the ceiling fan go round, and sink into the gaping chasm of himself until the clock ticks down and he can breath again.

He’s wondered before if having someone there to hold his hand might make the weight of his grief easier to bear, but he knows it wouldn’t. A witness to his pain would only force him to shove it out of sight.

He has no qualms about crying in front of his loved ones, but the empty look in his eye that stares back at him when he looks in the mirror on this day? They have no business seeing that. It’s an unseemly sort of agony—the kind that people flinch away from because they know they cannot ease it, and they fear what it might do to them if they step too close.

Tears are something they could handle—something fleeting and easily comprehended with the promise of catharsis always just over the horizon, but this… seeing Dick like this would hurt his loved ones too much, and because he knows that, he must bear it alone.

So here he is, in the dark, with only the vast and empty thing that lives in his chest for company.

When he first lost his parents, his grief was dulled by shock and anger, but those were nothing more than a temporary pacifier. Over the years, his grief has grown with him, taking on the complexities of adulthood and the added weight of every loss he’s experienced since. It is not a living thing so much as a waiting precipice that exists inside him. Usually it’s nothing more than scenery in the background, but there are days when it becomes demanding and central, forcing him to look over its edge and confront the demons that lie below.

He almost longs for the childhood simplicity of just missing his parents. He was closer then to the warmth of their memory, and his grief was a pure thing. A simple longing for their comforting embrace.

Now, that’s no longer true. There is still a part of him that lingers on their image, struggling more every year to recall the exact shade of his mother’s hair or the angle of his father’s smile and wondering how they’d feel about their hero of a son. Their failure of a son.

But now it is tinged with guilt—or perhaps that’s not quite right. Perhaps, in its own way, the guilt has been there since the beginning. Maybe guilt is what fed the fire of his anger; a need to set things right because Dick was the one that made them wrong when he made that foolish decision to tell no one what he’d overheard. He’d trusted in the immortality of youth—knowing with such certainty that Grayson’s always landed on their feet—and he’d gotten them killed.

The guilt coils in the pit of his stomach like a serpent, slowly tracing its path upwards. It slides up the ridges of his spine one by one, brushing against his beating heart as it makes its way through the center of his chest, and finally forms a noose around his throat.

His failures didn’t stop at his parents. They went on to be numerous—and deadly.

He failed his team. More than once, in small ways and big ways. He’s kept secrets from them and hurt them, made calls that got them injured, let them down when they needed him. He got Donna killed.

He failed Bruce—god knows how much he’s failed Bruce. Somedays, it seems like all he does is let the man down. So much so that Bruce fired him. Cut Dick out of his life and had him replaced, letting him back in only after Dick had done his penance, and never so completely.

He failed Jason. His baby brother, his successor, his little bird. Another name etched in stone because Dick was too caught up in himself to protect his family.

He’d promised himself never again, yet here he is. Watching the ceiling fan go round and round while his new little brother is somewhere in Gotham. He should be doing more for Tim, but he doesn’t know how.

If only he could have stopped himself from making that first mistake. If he’d told his parents what he’d heard, and persuaded them not to perform, none of the rest of it would have happened. He could still be a travelling acrobat, beloved by his parents and at ease in his own skin. He would not have this serpent of guilt curling inside him, or the chasm of sorrow so large within him that it seems to create a wind, sucking him down into it. There would be no selfish anger to flare up when the world is too cruel and lash out at his loved ones either. Just the bliss of the ignorant and the cared for.

But he cannot change the past. He only has the now, and the many things in it that make him want to keep moving. The bright spots that seem to be at the end of a long tunnel now, but are ultimately the reason his ceiling fan only gets one day a year of viewership.

He is needed. Needed, and loved too.

It is the thought of the people he calls his family that will pull him back when the clock strikes midnight. It’s his plans for dinner Sunday with Bruce and Alfred, movie marathons with Tim on Saturday nights, the call from Barbara that is never regular but always comes, the Titans reunion Wally hasn’t stopped talking about, the day Starfire gets back to Earth.

Today is a glimpse of the person Dick might have become if he hadn’t found those people, but the thing is, _he did._ He found them, and they found him, and this might always exist within Dick, _but it isn’t who he is,_ and he refuses to let it be. He’s seen what letting every day be one for grief does to a person, and he won’t let himself become that. Not ever.

Today, the ceiling fan goes round and round, and tomorrow it will spin just the same, but no one will be watching.

* * *

When Dick arrives in Gotham, Bruce is who the fuck knows where, and Alfred can only sigh in the usual manner that indicates ‘this family is responsible for each individual grey hair on my head, and doubly for the ones that aren’t even there anymore’. In the end, he gets Tim’s location from Babs, and of _course_ it’s a rooftop, because where else in a huge city could one possibly go when they’re upset?

Just because Dick participates in the family propensity for brooding from high perches doesn’t mean he can’t also be self aware about it.

He lands behind Tim, and for a moment, Tim is silhouetted by the sunrise, and Dick instinctively thinks _Jason._ It’s the same hair, same costume, same—

But Tim’s shoulders are more narrow. There’s a bo staff holstered at his side, and—as Dick settles beside him—Tim also has pants.

“You weren’t in the Cave for our usual training session,” Dick starts neutrally.

“Sorry.”

“You should be,” he says, forcing his voice to remain serious. “I had some really interesting drills planned for today. You were going to try a kick—get this—with your other foot.”

It draws a small smile from the boy.

It took some time to learn the rhythm of Tim’s smiles. At first, Dick hadn’t even realized there was a rhythm to learn, but once he got past the initial shock of another Robin after Jason and started trying to get to know the boy, he’d noticed that the frequent grins he’d taken for granted were… not fake precisely, but something like it. Manufactured, plastic, robotic—Dick spent many a training session frowning at Tim’s smiles and coming up with every imaginable synonym for how they were just a little bit _off._

But this small one, it’s real. Crooked and close mouthed and accompanied by a tilt of Tim’s head like he instinctively wants to hide it—protect it.

Dick suppresses his own smile, clinging to his overly stuffy tone. “You’ll just have to make it up to me. I accept payment in ice cream and hugs.”

Jason would have punched him for that one. Hopefully just on the arm, but depending on the day… 

It burns, that knowledge. Like molten glass sliding down his throat. Jason is dead, and Dick will never get a second chance to be a better big brother to him, to actually show up and put in the work until they could’ve interacted without the threat of violence always just around the corner.

But Tim is here. He is alive, and breathing, and he doesn’t punch Dick. Instead he just freezes

“Uh,” he says, and can’t seem to think of a single thing to follow it up with.

Tim reacts to the suggestion of touch in much the same way most people react to old exes. Uncertainly, and with the trepidation of someone trying to maintain a polite veneer while their life flashes before their eyes. And much like the outside bystander that he is, Dick is left drowning in the weight of a complex history he isn’t privy to that’s making the air buzz with uncomfortable tension.

Now is perhaps not the best time to get into that though.

“Ice cream it is,” Dick declares. If he’s learned one thing from Wally, it’s that every problem is easier to face with a full stomach and a satiated sweet tooth. “Come on.”

In a matter of minutes, they’re settled once again, but this time they’re off the ledge and facing one another, a carton and two spoons between them.

“So,” Dick drawls. “What’s up.”

Tim’s eyes stay firmly on the ground, even as he takes another bite. “I just didn’t feel like training today.”

Dick raises his eyebrows. He can count on one hand the number of times Tim hasn’t _felt_ like training since becoming Robin, and all of them included grievous injury or illness. It’s something he’s unfailingly conscientious about, which to be fair doesn’t make it unique. Tim’s meticulous nature can verge on neurotic when it comes to all things Robin.

“Okay, was there something else you wanted to do instead?” Dick hazards, hoping to spur something.

Tim shrugs.

“So the plan was really to just sit on that ledge and stare into space until you fell asleep on it?”

He doesn’t quite wince, but the line of his mouth tightens.

Tim is, in so many ways, just like Bruce. Peas in a goddamn pod. The biggest difference seems to be that Tim is better at pretending to be a person, though he’s not trying to do that now, and while Dick appreciates the honesty, he’d rather have answers.

Pressing a finger to his comms, Dick asks Babs, “We clear?”

 _“You’re clear,”_ she responds almost immediately.

“Thanks, let me know if that changes please.”

 _“Sure.”_

Dick pulls off his mask, gesturing for Tim to do the same. Reluctantly, the boy does, slowly dragging his gaze up to meet Dick’s.

Without the masks in the way, Dick can see right into the heart of Tim’s ice chip eyes, but it no longer scares him. He’d thought that Tim’s coldness might be a sign that he was going to grow into something twisted and dark, and maybe Dick was right in another universe, but in this universe, Tim found Batman. He found a light.

No, Tim won’t ever go dark side on them—Dick’s certain of _that_ —which leaves Dick with a hunch that the ice in Tim’s eyes isn’t there by nature. It’s there because no one ever offered him warmth, and that breaks Dick’s heart.

There’s a simple solution of course; Dick will just have to be the warmest big brother this side of Krypton, and get in as many hugs as Tim can tolerate without spontaneously combusting.

A smile tugs at the corner of Dick’s lips. “You can trust me,” he says.

Tim gulps, his eyes darting away like just looking at Dick for too long might blind him. For a moment, he seems to consider, weighing the pros and cons of speaking, until at last he says, “I got in a fight with Steph.”

It takes a second for Dick to place the name and follow it to all its implications, but when he does, his eyes widen a bit. “Oh. What about?”

“My, uh, secret identity.”

“You haven’t told her,” Dick says, because _of course_ he hasn’t. Bruce would never let Tim give away his secret ID to someone the old man still thinks of as nothing more than a particularly annoying civilian.

He sends a short prayer of thanks to the heavens that the greatest loves of his life both knew his secret ID nearly from the start. He’s had enough relationship drama without this extra hurdle in the mix.

“No. She’s only dating me as Robin, and it’s starting to… strain things.” Tim winces.

“I can see how that would be difficult.” He’s not laughing. _He’s not._ His little brother is having a very serious problem with his very serious girlfriend, and Dick is going to be supportive goddammit. “When you say you got in a fight… ”

“She yelled at me for a bit, and I got defensive, which came off sort of,” Tim roots around for a word that isn’t ‘assholeish’ and eventually comes up with, “ _inconsiderate._ ”

Dick nods. “So you need to apologize to her.”

“Well, yes,” Tim admits, “but what’s the point when I still can’t tell her my name? Isn’t it just prolonging the inevitable? If she wants to break up with me over this, it would be simpler if she could just do it.” He sounds miserable, and suddenly Dick no longer wants to laugh.

“You really like her.”

Tim’s fiddling with his spoon, not looking at him again. “Yeah. I do.”

His little brother is going through his first heartbreak, and he’s unfortunate enough for it to be a slow, messy one. Dick sighs. “Tim, there is no version of this that is simple. When we’re in these,” he holds up his mask, “love is never going to be anything but difficult.”

“More like impossible,” Tim mutters.

“Well then it’s a good thing our job _is_ the impossible then,” Dick shoots back immediately, because he outright _refuses_ to let his little brother stop believing in love.

Tim looks less than convinced though, so Dick takes a deep breath and begins, “I thought Starfire was the love of my life.” She wasn’t the first time he thought it, but some instinct makes Dick tuck Barbara’s name close to his chest and hold it there. “She was… amazing. Fierce and strong and confident in a way that I could never look away from. I wanted… god I wanted everything. I wanted her to be _my_ everything.” Memories well up in his mind like a highlight reel of his happiest days, and Dick pauses for a moment to let them wash over him.

“But,” he says, “it didn’t work out. And when she was gone, it felt like she took a piece of me with her, but y’know what? I think I took a piece of her too. I think that we changed each other for the better, and now a part of me will always love her, even if we can’t be together, and if I could go back in time to stop myself from beginning our story just because the ending hurt me, I wouldn’t.”

Break ups, Dick has learned, are just another form of grief.

Tim is quiet for a moment. “I really wanted it to work,” he says at length.

“I know.” Dick takes a bite of ice cream. “And I’m sorry.”

“She changed me a lot,” Tim says after another long pause. “She—” He cuts himself off, looking distressed.

Without stopping to think, Dick moves the ice cream out of the way and scoots forward until he can wrap his arms around Tim.

“She’s always going to be special to you,” he supplies, and Tim buries his head in Dick’s shoulder, nodding slightly. “You’re going to be alright though. You’re going to fall in love again, and one day you’ll find someone to make it last forever with. Maybe one day you’ll even be in a position to make that someone Steph, but even if it isn’t, the love you have for her still counts for something. It’s still important.”

Tim isn’t crying, but he clings to Dick, and it’s a little strange to be on this side of things. To be the comfort _er_ instead of the comfort _ed_ on a Gotham rooftop, but Dick knows immediately it’s something he’s going to get used to.

He failed at being a big brother before, but this time, he’s going to be good at it—perfect, even. He’s going to be there for Tim, and everyone will be alright. Better than alright—they’ll be happy.

* * *

Jason comes back, and Dick finds out about it in a newspaper. A fucking _newspaper_.

Dick tries and tries to grasp onto that anger and hold it tight, but it keeps slipping through his fingers, and every time it does, a wave of grief crashes down on him all over again, and he doesn’t even know why.

His little brother is back. He’s _alive_ . Shouldn’t that be cause to celebrate? Dick desperately wants to believe it is, but every time he begins to, a voice in his head whispers, _he’s back, but at what cost?_

He knows what Jason’s done since his return. The duffle bag of severed heads. The clean, execution style killings of mobsters across Gotham. His plot to kill the Joker. If it really is Dick’s brother under that hood, then something is terribly wrong, and Dick is helpless to do anything about it.

Bruce won’t let him within a hundred miles of Gotham, and god knows Jason probably doesn’t have any interest in seeing him, which means Dick is stuck in Blüdhaven, feeling like a dog tied to a post outside a restaurant. There’s a collar around his neck, and nobody will just fucking let him _in._

He doesn’t even know what he’d say to Jason, but he keeps trying to imagine what his little brother must look like now that he’s all grown up. _Has_ he grown? For all Dick knows, Jason is just a traumatized fifteen year old, intimidating gangs into submission all across Gotham.

The image is… actually sort of hilarious. Jason was certainly fearsome enough in life to do it, and it’s not a stretch to believe that in death he’d be even more effective.

… And Dick hates himself for just thinking that. He’s making light about the cold blooded execution of multiple people by his dead little brother. What has his life become?

Dick decides it’s never too early in the morning to get a drink.

* * *

Bruce is dead.

He was in a fight against… actually? Dick doesn’t even _care_ . What matters is that he’s gone, and there’s not even a body to bury. He _left_ Dick. No goodbye, no sorry about the mess, not even a goddamn ‘remember me fondly’. Just… there one minute, and gone the next.

And the thing is, Dick always knew that was how it was going to happen. The lives they live… this is how they end. Abruptly. Without resolution or fulfillment.

Bruce knew that, but he still put on the costume every night and went out anyway. He couldn’t have stopped if he tried. Dick knows because he _did_ try and guess what he’s still doing? _Ding ding ding,_ hero work.

It’s going to kill them all one day. Every. Last. One.

The good news: that includes him. 

The bad news: there’s no telling how many people he’ll have to lose first.

He’s in shock, he knows. Firmly stuck in the denial position of the Kubler Ross model, and making no move to budge from it. Eventually, he’ll cry and scream and rip himself open in a vain attempt to pry the cracked and broken heart from his chest—or maybe he won’t. Maybe Dick will hold it together because someone in this family has to. Who knows?

For now, he pours himself a glass of whiskey and thinks of a ceiling fan going round and round.

* * *

Dick is familiar with all manner of temporal anomalies, but none quite compare to the way the world freezes when he steps into the Watchtower for the first time since Bruce’s death. Six pairs of eyes snap to him, and together they linger in the rift between expectation and reality as they look at Dick, and see only a dead man.

The irony of being on this side of things after those first bumpy months with Tim is not lost on Dick.

Of course, it’s not the first time Dick has worn the suit. He’s filled in for Bruce a couple of times when the man was bedridden or needed to throw someone off the secret identity trail. It never bothered him before, but that was because it was always temporary. Always good for a laugh when he spun his adventures into wild tales for Wally and Roy that set them off into peels of laughter because the idea of _Dick_ as _Batman_ was just that ridiculous.

He always took extra care to strip those stories of their claws when he told them. He censored the moments of true danger in a way that he usually never bothered to when he was talking to other heroes, and played up the moments of levity much more than was their due. Those stories—really the idea of him in the cowl at all—were as funny as they were because Dick _made_ them that way. He’s always been good at that. Redirecting people’s attention from how fucking _scared_ he is.

Dick Grayson wanted the idea of him becoming Batman to be funny, because if it wasn’t funny, it might just become true.

No one is laughing now though, and for once, Dick doesn’t think that’s a fact he can change. There is no angle from which this is humorous, and even if there were, he can’t afford to go there. This isn’t dress up anymore, and there isn’t anyone waiting in the wings to sling an arm over his shoulder and ask him to tell them all about it.

 _This_ is stealing the suit practically from his father’s corpse and inserting himself into Bruce’s life like nothing happened. _This_ is becoming the very thing that Bruce tried to save Dick from all those years ago. _This_ feels like a coffin of his very own to match the ones he’s put in the ground.

Their stares pin him in place like stakes through Bruce’s heavy black boots, and he can do nothing but bare their scrutiny—their shock, their pity—until finally, Clark breaks. “Welcome, Batman.” His voice is all man of steel, the Kansas farm boy in him shoved deep deep down.

Dick nods to him, and forces his feet to move. Six pairs of eyes follow him as he settles into Bruce’s— _his_ chair.

The table is round, but Dick feels like he’s at the head. It’s his job to lead them past this. He should say something reassuring, but what? Should he thank them for their patience in the weeks since Bruce’s death? No, Batman doesn’t thank people, and especially not for following a law he laid down ages ago. No metas in Gotham, not even when the city falls to civil war.

The gravel in Dick’s voice has little to do with imitating Bruce, and everything to do with the tightness in his throat when he finally says, “The situation in Gotham has stabilized. I will be taking over all the responsibilities that come with my mantle, and commencing active duty, effective immediately.”

His tone brooks no argument, but Clark clears his throat anyway, instantly drawing the room’s attention. “What about the others?”

Bruce never got around to installing heat vision in the cowl, but right now, Dick doesn’t even need the extra boost for his glare to cut the Kryptonian down.

It’s not Clark’s fault, of course. He doesn’t know—couldn’t possibly know—but intent means less than nothing when you press on a wounded animal’s bruise.

“The _others_ , are not League members and therefore none of your concern,” Dick snaps, and for once, it doesn’t take an ounce of effort to channel Bruce’s usual command.

What he’s not saying, is that his family is scattered. After the bloody battle for the cowl, all of his siblings are gone, except Damian.

Damian, who had stood stone faced at his father’s graveside as an empty coffin disappeared into the earth, who’s breakdown was violent and completely contained to the confines of his room, leaving shards of glass and broken wood behind for Alfred to pick up.

Damian, who told Dick with such absolute certainty that if Batman was truly gone, then the only place left for him was the League of Assassins. Who thought his right to a home in Wayne Manor and in their lives was forfeit without that blood tie.

Dick had already failed Jason that week and he _refused_ to let Damian slip through his fingers too, so he’d done the only thing he could. He’d given Damian something to hold onto, and in the process, he’d lost Tim.

That night played behind Dick’s eyelids in every spare moment, a constant reminder of how badly he’d fucked up. How his father had died and left him in a nightmarish no-win scenario.

Damian had needed Robin, and Dick hadn’t known that Tim still did too. 

Tim has more than proved himself capable of greater things than being Batman’s sidekick, and perhaps more importantly, is unquestionably Dick’s equal. Dick had thought that to be a mutually understood fact, had assumed Tim too was uncomfortable with the possibility of Dick giving him orders so directly. He really had thought Tim was ready to grow beyond Robin.

Even if he wasn’t quite as ready as he’d like to be, Dick had hoped that Tim—logical, even keeled Tim who always did what had to be done—would understand that Dick had had no other choice. He’d been backed up against a wall, and while Damian was still a child with trust issues up to the gills, Tim had always been able to see the bigger picture. Dick had been counting on that innate sense of what they all needed to keep from falling into darkness, but that turned out to be a mistake.

Dick has spent most of his relationship with Tim carefully making sure that he never relied on the young boy too much. Their relationship could be mutually supportive, but Dick never lost sight of the fact that he was still the adult. When it came down to it, Tim was _his_ responsibility.

That night, he’d let himself fall hoping Tim would catch him, and he’d been wrong. For the first time he’d let himself truly _need_ Tim’s support, but Tim had left. He’d gone mad with pain, and he’d just left. Dick doesn’t even know what country he’s in right now.

Another person he failed.

“Perhaps we should start the agenda for today’s meeting,” Diana suggests diplomatically.

Dick forces the glare off his face, letting it fall flat and blank. “Agreed.”

He feels eyes on him for the rest of the meeting, watching and waiting for him to break down from the weight of his grief like his brothers did, but Dick won’t let that happen. Too many people are counting on him.

* * *

Dick ducks just in time for the glass bottle to fly over his head, missing by inches and ruffling his sweat soaked hair before shattering against the stone wall behind him. He glances back, wincing at the shards scattered across the ground and grateful for the heavy soles of Bruce’s boots.

They’re both still in costume, but Damian has already ripped the mask from his face in a fit of rage that seems to have been going on for several minutes now, and Dick’s cowl is pooled around his shoulders. He’s found hiding behind it only makes matters worse when it comes to talking Damian down.

“How can you be so utterly _incompetent?_ ” Damian is snarling. His chest rises and falls in great heaves like he’s just run several miles, and his already dark skin is flushed. “That pillock of a malefactor never should have gotten away, and if you possessed even a _shred_ of ability or good sense, you would have prevented his escape instead of letting yourself be overwhelmed by useless _sentimentality_.”

He spits his words like projectiles meant to cleave Dick’s skin, but this is already the eighth or ninth time they’ve had this conversation, and Dick is no longer fooled by that venom. He can see past the anger Damian has wrapped around himself like a shield, and into the blood soaked boy who’s so scared of seeming weak, that he treats the very _idea_ that someone might show him kindness like it’s a threat.

When Dick responds, it’s in the same manner he always has. Calmly, and with his hands clearly in a position of surrender. “It’s a shame that he got away, yes, but we can just track him down again later. If I’d gone after him instead of helping you, you would be dead, Damian.” He’s not going to let this become a fight, but he’s also not going to back down.

“Tt,” Damian scoffs. “Nothing so pedestrian as a falling beam could kill the Al Ghul heir. Death will only find a warrior such as myself on the end of an enemy’s blade, and no sooner.” His chest puffs out with pride, and there’s a gleam in his eyes as he speaks of his own death that worries Dick nearly as much as almost losing him had.

“Damian,” Dick says carefully, “you are not immortal.”

“I know that,” he snaps. “I only mean that I would not have died had you made the correct choice. I admit my injuries may have been more severe, but nothing I cannot handle.”

“Maybe, but you shouldn’t have to ‘handle’ anything,” Dick presses. “Your well-being matters more to me than catching any criminal.”

Damian blinks, surprise that dissolves into something much worse. His shoulders slump, and his eyes fall to the ground. The only thing that remains of his defiance is the hard angle of his mouth. “Then you are a fool.”

At that, Dick can’t help but laugh, just a little. “Maybe I am. Does that really bother you?”

Damian just glares at him, the look holding none of its earlier scorn.

Dick smiles winningly, and dares a step closer. “Come on, let's get you patched up. I know you’ve been favoring your left side."

Dick is hoping for enough guilt to make him cooperative, but the way Damian freezes is nothing but pure fear—the instinctive kind that comes from muscle memory and trauma. “I am doing no such thing,” he hisses.

If it weren’t a horribly impractical idea, Dick would fly across the world to whatever hell Ra’s al Ghul is calling home these days and drown the man in a toilet, just to make sure his death was as undignified as possible.

The League of Assassins doesn’t deserve his mercy after what they’ve done to Damian, but he forces himself to keep such thoughts off his face. He can’t afford to lose his temper anywhere near Damian, or it will lose him whatever meager inches of ground he’s managed to gain with the boy.

“Being injured is not a sign of failure,” he says instead, but Damian just looks at him like he’s said something incomprehensible, so Dick proves it. He yanks off his gauntlets and holds up his bruised wrists for Damian to see. “Do you think I’ve failed?” he challenges softly.

For a long moment, Damian keeps his eyes on Dick’s instead of looking at the exposed wrists. His head is canted to the side like he’s trying to solve a puzzle, and when he finally prowls a slow step forward, Dick is reminded of a cat testing the waters with a new human. He examines Dick’s wrists closely, taking in the mottled skin in its varying hues of purple and blue.

“When—?” he starts to ask.

“Fighting outside my natural style has had certain drawbacks,” Dick answers evenly. “I don’t quite have the frame he did, and not even reinforced gauntlets can pad blows as well as escrima sticks.”

Damian is quiet for a long time, unconsciously rubbing at his own wrists as he frowns at Dick’s. Finally, he says, “No.”

“No what?”

Damian shoots him an annoyed look for forcing any sort of clarification, but gives it anyway. “You have not failed. Those are the injuries of a warrior.”

It’s not a compliment Dick would ever expect to appreciate, but coming from Damian it feels like progress. “Yours are too,” he says. “Now will you let me treat them?”

There is another long pause as Damian considers the offer. Turning it over and testing it for any hint of a trap. When he finds none, he’s satisfied enough to nod his consent, and begins to strip out of the Robin suit.

Dick helps him with his boots when his ankle proves too swollen for removal to be anything less than excruciating, and doesn’t say anything when Damian puts a hand on his shoulder for support, squeezing until Dick’s nearly certain he’ll have a new set of bruises to add to the rest.

He works in silence—mostly because he’s afraid any attempt at small talk will send Damian running for the hills—mentally compiling the report he’ll have to write later and planning out their next steps for finding the guy they lost today as he goes. He’s interrupted a while later when Damian asks, “Why did you come back for me?”

Startled by the abrupt question, Dick glances up at Damian to see the boy already looking at him. There’s a furrow of deep thought between his brows, and his emerald green eyes are intent upon Dick, searching for any hint to the truth—or any sign of a lie.

Dick swallows. “Damian, you’re my little brother. Of course I came back for you.”

“Yes, but _why?_ ”

Sighing, Dick gently lowers the ankle he’d pulled into his lap to the floor and rises to his feet so they can be on even ground. “Because I care about you. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

And it shouldn’t be any sort of revelation, but. It is. Somehow, it is.

Damian’s expression, always plastered with snarls and smirks and violence—cracks. Shock, at first, but then his eyes soften and melt until it looks like he just might cry, and the lines of his face always so deep with rage go smooth. The emotion plain across his features now is so intense that Dick very nearly feels like he has to look away. Like it’s a violation to see Damian like this.

Except, it’s not a violation. Damian is letting this happen, and that makes Dick’s own heart swell with fondness.

“I—” Damian starts to say, but his voice is too high and he stops to swallow lest it break. “I don’t want to see you hurt either,” he says, and Dick gets the impression it’s not precisely what he meant to, but when he looks into Damian’s eyes, it’s impossible to misinterpret what the boy means.

A soft smile spreads across Dick’s face, infused with all the warmth he feels for his Robin. “Thank you, Damian.”

Damian nods. “You’re welcome.”

It’s such a bizarre answer in this context, that Dick actually laughs.

“Tt- what’s so funny?” Damian snaps, but by the time Dick gets himself under control, Damian is smiling too.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

* * *

_“Annnd that’s a wrap folks,”_ Barbara says over the comm line. _“GCPD’s doing the final cell checks_ — _completely redundant when they have me, but they like feeling useful_ — _so everyone can head home and get some rest."_

Dick lets his head fall back against the brick wall he’s leaning against. Every one of his muscles aches, and now that the adrenaline is finally starting to wear off, he’s dead on his feet.

Besides a collective groan of relief, there’s only one more reply on the comms before the line goes dead in Dick’s ear. _“Good work everyone, Batman out.”_

Despite feeling like shit, a smile pulls at the corner of Dick’s mouth. Never again will he take the sound of Bruce’s perfunctory praise after a fight for granted. Not after going so long thinking he’d never hear it again.

He’s just about to start moving again (no really, he is) when his comm comes back to life with the sound of Barbara’s voice. _“Nightwing, report to the Clock Tower immediately."_

His whole body goes rigid. “Is something wrong?”

_“If I said yes, would you get here any faster?”_

Barbara may claim a degree of separation from Bruce and his family, but when it comes down to it she’s just like the rest of them. Costume or not, she’s got a mask on, and Dick can’t read it.

“On my way.”

When he gets there, Barbara isn’t even pretending to be working. She’s already turned to face him, her hands folded in her lap and her hair still tied back in its severe ponytail.

“Babs? What’s going on?”

“We need to talk.”

He grins wryly, trying to alleviate some of the mounting tension in the room with a joke. “Uh oh, are you breaking up with me again?” Neither of them laughs. It’s been well over a year, but somehow it’s still too soon.

Her eyes do soften though. “Dick, I didn’t want to talk about it like this, but I don’t think you’ve left me much of a choice. You’ve been dodging my phone calls and cancelling dinner plans all month.”

“I’ve just been—”

“Don’t lie. Not to me.”

There’s the Babs he knows. Voice like steel, eyes full of an intensity that he could drown himself in.

Dick sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Barbara glances away a moment to collect herself. It’s a small tell, one most people misinterpret, but Dick understands. She’s getting ready to force the conversation in the direction she wants it to go, whether or not Dick is on board with that.

“Look, I didn’t ask you here for an apology,” she says, rolling her wheelchair forward a bit.

“Then why?”

At this distance, he can see the green of her eyes when she looks at him. Can feel those eyes stripping away the layers of him, seeing past the performance and digging toward something deeper. He wants to hide. If she were anyone else, he _would_ hide. But she’s not.

“Because Bruce has been back a month and you’re pretending that’s not fucking you up,” she finally says. “Because when you think no one’s looking, you stare at him like you don’t even recognize him. Because you grieved for him and put your whole life on pause to step into the role he left behind for you, but now he’s back, and you refuse to have a real conversation about it.”

It’s a fight to keep meeting her gaze. “That’s not true.”

“Oh really? Who exactly have you talked to about this then Dick? Who?” Her words are blunt, but not unkind.

Dick gives up on their silent contest of wills and glances away, dragging his fingers through his hair and over his face. “Fine. I haven’t talked to anyone, but that’s because I don’t need to. Bruce is _back_ , Babs. That’s cause for celebration, not a nervous breakdown.”

“Like hell you don’t,” Babs replies immediately. “And who decided that? Was it Bruce? Because he certainly seemed in a festive mood when Jason came back from the dead.”

_“That’s not the same and you know it.”_

“No, Dick. I don’t. And I don’t think it’s fair for you to hold yourself to some golden standard of emotional stability that doesn’t exist when you give everyone around you a free pass. _Nobody_ handles resurrection well. Not Bruce, not Tim, and certainly not Jason or Damian so just _talk to me_.”

“What exactly do you want me to say?” He’s yelling. He knows he is, and he can’t stop himself. “That I’m not okay? That when Bruce died he took a piece of me with him and now he’s back but that piece isn’t? That I never grieved him properly, and now I don’t have to, but it almost feels _worse?_ ”

Barbara stares at him, long and hard. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want you to say.”

And then he’s caving in on himself. Falling hard to his knees and staring down at his gloved hands like he’s searching for answers that might not even exist.

Barbara rolls herself forward until she can reach out and pull his head into her lap, gently carding her fingers through his hair. The gesture is loving and kind and hurts so very much.

He wraps his arms around her waist. “I’m scared,” he confesses. “I’m scared that if Bruce is back and this sadness is still inside me, then maybe it’s just me.”

Barbara doesn’t say anything, she just listens, and keeps stroking his hair.

“I’ve never wanted to be Batman. Not really. When he died, I was so angry at him for forcing me to become that, but now he’s back, and a part of me doesn’t want to let it go. A part of me wanted things to stay the way they were.” His eyes are lined with silver. “And I know it’s not really about the mantle, but it’s so much easier to say that than admit _I don’t want to let Damian go_. It’s selfish and wrong but I love him so much more deeply than I should. I—”

He has to cut himself off, turning his head to bury his face in her stomach. “He already has a father, Babs. I know what I have to do, but it shouldn’t be this hard.”

It crosses his mind that this isn’t a fair thing to say to her. Not when they came so close to having children of their own, and not when that’s never going to be an option for her again, but he dismisses the thought just as quickly. Babs would kill him for thinking she’s someone he has to be careful around.

Barbara sighs deeply. “Dick, you’re not a bad person for loving him. You did so well helping Damian become the best version of himself, and I know you want what’s best for him, but you’re a person too. Your feelings are valid.”

“Not these ones.”

Barbara’s voice turns sharp. “Why not?”

“Because they could hurt someone. If I don’t step back, Damian will never properly bond with Bruce, and I know how much that relationship means to the both of them.”

Gently, Barbara pulls his head back until they can look each other in the eye. “You’re right, but that doesn’t make your feelings on the matter less valid. Dick, you spend so much of your time supporting everyone else that I think you forget that it’s okay for you to need a safety net too. You don’t always have to be perfect or strong, you just have to be you.”

Fresh tears well in Dick’s eyes. He doesn’t try to hide them. “I have to protect them.”

“And how will you do that if you destroy yourself first?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

She pulls him in close again. “You know I love you right? That I’d still love you no matter what? Even if you were selfish sometimes? Or angry or sad? I don’t want a perfect lie, and neither does your family. We want you to be happy, even if that means you need to be sad first.”

“That seems like an oxymoron,” he says, but his voice is muffled against the fabric of her sweatshirt and tight with tears.

She laughs. “Maybe it is, but you know it’s true.”

The silence lingers for a long moment before he speaks again. “I gave so much of myself to filling his shoes. How do I get all of those pieces back?”

“I’m not sure that you do,” she admits. “You aren’t the same person that you were last year, but that would have been true even if Bruce had never gone away.”

“Your answers aren’t very comforting.”

“Y’know, I used to tell my dad the same thing.”

“What’d he say?”

“‘Neither is life.’”

“Wow, I feel so much better.”

She shoves him away, but when he looks up at her face, she’s smiling at him. “Thank you,” he says. He doesn’t try to explain why. There aren’t enough words.

She nods. “Next time, don’t make me use my Oracle voice to get you here, okay?”

Part of him shrinks away from the idea of there being a next time, but he smiles shakily at her anyway. “Yeah, okay.”

He feels stupid and young and fragile here on the floor at Barbara’s feet with tear tracks on his cheeks, but maybe he’s supposed to feel that way. Maybe he’s been spending too much of his energy lately trying not to feel that way.

“Good,” Barbara says. “Now you’re staying the night. We’re going to watch stupid movies and eat lots of popcorn, then in the morning you’re going to tell me how I’m the love of your life and how you wouldn’t know what to do without me. After that, I don’t know, go to Blüdhaven and do something exceedingly stupid with Wally. That always puts you in a better mood.”

Dick laughs, but it’s short lived. “You are, y’know.” Their eyes meet, but he doesn’t back down. “You’re the love of my life.” It comes out on a quiet breath. Not a bold declaration, but an unnecessary confirmation.

She smiles. It’s tinged with something sad, but mostly it’s just beautiful. “I know.”

He wants to pull her close and never let go, but he doesn’t. He can’t bear the thought that he might hold her back.

Clearing his throat, Dick rolls fluidly to his feet. He feels lighter than he has in months and he has to admit, Barbara’s plan of attack is—as always—flawless.

“So, a movie. Got any ideas?”

* * *

Fog hangs over the cemetery when Dick arrives. It’s not the thick smog typical to Gotham, but something fresher that’s already dissolving beneath the morning sun. It lays damp against his skin and settles in his hair as he walks along the neat rows of headstones and plaques. Not uniform, but orderly.

He’s miles outside the city limits, and the only ambient noise to disturb the peace of this place is the soft sounds of birds and the rustling of a lazily stirring wind. It’s been so long since he came that he has to read the weathered names closely to find his parents.

He’s never specifically avoided visiting their graves, but it seemed pointless when he’s always felt closer to them when he’s soaring through the air than here on the ground. He’s not even sure they wanted to be buried, let alone on foreign soil. It seems too restrictive for the brightness of the souls he remembers, but the information never exactly came up in conversation, so now all he can do is wonder.

They share a headstone. Simple engraving, no epitaph. For the best, probably, since a stranger would have had to write it for them. Despite the years it’s been since Dick last visited, the grave is clean and well kept. It pains him to think that he’s not sure who he has to thank for that.

Dick fixes his eyes on the sky and takes several deep breaths. He came here for a reason, but suddenly it seems like too much. He thinks of the man he passed too many rows back to count. He’d been bent with age, but he’d seemed tall all the same in the way only proud people can be as he spoke in soft tones to a freshly cut stone. Dick couldn’t make out his words, but the fondness in his expression was unmistakable even from a distance.

Dick draws strength from that stranger, breathing through the tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Coming back to himself, he kneels down to place his offering at the base of their gravestone. It’s a wild, bright bouquet of violet hyssop and pink camellias, the colors clashing extravagantly. It’s perfect for them.

He lets his fingers trail from the bouquet to the stone, tracing their names with reverent fingers.

“Hi Mom,” his voice cracks, “Dad.”

All but the most stubborn patches of fog have lifted, leaving a crisp wind that whistles softly through the grass. Dick presses his hand against the cool stone, and tries to keep his chin up. “I miss you guys. More everyday, I think.”

He lets that truth hang, feeling the weight of it in the air. The weight of it off his chest.

“I have so much to tell you both,” he says, but he can’t quite form the words for any of it, so instead he takes a moment to let his mind drift freely over his memories, lingering on the warmest ones. Jason having his back in a fight, Tim calling him to check in, Damian wrapping his arms around him in a reluctant but no less genuine hug. Barbara running her fingers through his hair, Bruce giving him a small, almost secret smile. Alfred resting a hand on his shoulder.

“You would have loved them, you know,” he says. “You would have loved anyone who could make me happy, but Mom, Dad, you _really_ would have loved them.” He smiles, but can’t hold it for long.

“I think about you guys a lot. I know you’d be proud of me, but I… I struggled to believe that for a long time.” His heart feels too big for his chest. “I know I’m supposed to be your ray of sunshine, but it’s _hard._ There is so much to growing up that I never could have guessed, and you were supposed to teach me about all of it. I love my new family, but I still feel so lost sometimes. Like it’s all I can do to keep my head above water, and all I want—more than air or land—is to _rest_ . I try to be strong, just like you taught me to be, but it is _exhausting_.

“I’ve spent so long trying not to need a net, that I’ve forgotten how to put my feet on the ground again. Now I’m trying to figure it out, but how do you unlearn a smile? How do you step off a stage that seems to follow you around?

“Do you remember Sam’s act? It would open with him at a false vanity mirror in the middle of the ring. We lowered the lights in the whole tent, and put a big spotlight on him. He pretended to be flattered at first, but the light wouldn’t leave him alone. He started to get angry at it, then afraid, until it was chasing him around the ring.” Dick swallows, staring down at his hands. “ _Why can’t I remember how the act ends?_ I remember Sam stumbling around, slipping on banana peels, and stepping on rakes while the audience laughs, but I can’t remember if he gets away. In my dreams, he doesn’t.

“I want to dream better dreams, but it seems like most of my life has been more like nightmare fuel, doesn’t it?” He chuckles quietly. “If you were here Mom, I know what you’d say. You’d tell me I just have to get a better imagination then.”

He can practically hear the sound of her voice in his ears. It soothes something deep inside him, just as it always has. “Okay, Mom. I can do that. For you… for _me,_ I can do that.”

There’s more to say, he’s sure, but the sun has fully risen now, and when he cranes his head toward it’s light, warmth flushes across his cheeks. His eyes fall closed and he can feel soft grass twisting between his fingers. It’s a beautiful day.

He leaves without really saying goodbye, but it’s okay because he knows he can come back. On his way out, he stops and asks the old man about the grave he’s visiting. He stays, and listens to the man’s reply, and eventually offers a story of his own. He tells the man that today is the anniversary of his parents’ death, and then he tells him about the first time his parents took him out in the snow.

He stays for a long time, and even though it makes him late to family dinner at the manor, he doesn’t feel guilty.

**Author's Note:**

> I have never felt the phrase kill your darlings more keenly. I've got a 40 page google doc full of things I had to take out, and I'd love to share them (most of them. Some got removed for being just... _so_ poorly written). I'll be posting those over the next few days on my tumblr @violet_witch_6, and possibly on AO3 for the more complete ones. 
> 
> Anyway, considering how incredibly difficult this was to do, I… have absolutely nothing to say about the next installation in the series except for that it will probably happen before 2030. Maybe.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment. Personal favorites include: quoting me back to me, essay comments, any form of incoherence, and mentions of favorite lines/sections, but honestly I will cherish literally anything you write, even though I suck at actually responding. Promise.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!!


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